In 'The Testament of Ann Lee,' Dance Is Divine

Filmmaker Mona Fastvold had a unique challenge in crafting her musical fable The Testament of Ann Lee: She needed to bring a nearly lost religious practice to the screen. The drama follows the titular 18th-century leader (played by Amanda Seyfried) of the Shakers, a religious sect known for worshipping through hymns paired with rapturous movement.

For the “speculative retelling,” Fastvold tapped choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall—one of her longtime friends and collaborators, with whom she previously worked on 2018’s Vox Lux—to help paint a portrait of a then-persecuted female religious figure examined through a contemporary lens.

“The biggest thing was that we wanted to make something that felt historically accurate while also not being completely tied down to some representation,” Rowlson-Hall tells Marie Claire over Zoom in early December. “I think the reason that [Fastvold] brought me, [composer] Daniel [Blumberg], and the different collaborators on was that she trusted that we would take the material and do our most honest work around it.”

Rowlson-Hall’s take on the Shakers is an “ecstatic state” building up to “that next level of receiving God and love.” In scenes spanning from a Manchester manor to a cramped ship deck to open Albany fields, congregants’s bodies create a rhythm through slapping, shaking, stomping, and chants turned melodic. Dozens drop to their knees, hit their chests as if expelling forces from their body, before throwing their hands towards the sky to welcome in something new and pure. As the choreographer describes, “You almost have to feel your body get so exhausted that it goes into this next state of feeling that your spiritual self almost rises out of that physical body.”

Though Ann Lee is propelled by music and dance, it’s hard to categorize it as a movie-musical. The Shakers aren’t meant to have otherworldly talent or years of training; they’re humble people who move their bodies in the mundane ways they can, to connect to the beyond. This makes Rowlson-Hall, who’s best known for creating scenes like the emotional ending sequence in Aftersun, a perfect fit for the material. She knows how to strip dance down to its most essential form: storytelling for when the emotions are too big to bear.

“These were people who were coming from their jobs where they're working with their hands, whether they're in the mill or in the ironsmith. They had time for work, prayer, sleep, eat, and that was it,” she explains. “It was really important to me to make sure that this would feel like it could fit into the vernacular of their lives. I remember being in the studio, and anytime I got a little too dancer-ly, I was like, Nope. Back to prayer, back to simplicity. Simple looks so easy, but it is so hard.”

As The Testament of Ann Lee arrives in theaters on Christmas Day, Rowlson-Hall tells Marie Claire about leaning into Seyfried’s natural dance skills, reminiscing on her own Christian upbringing, and highlighting dance as bodily agency.

Marie Claire: What was the research process like for this film? Were you able to find any specific written descriptions of the Shakers’s movements?

Celia Rowlson-Hall: There were some different depictions saying that they would dance ecstatically and sing and shake on the ground. They would dance all through the night and then be arrested in the morning because they were disturbing the peace. So I did think, Okay, they were wild. But sometimes I didn't really know what was exaggeration or hearsay versus what was truth. We do have these beautiful black-and-white drawings of hundreds of Shakers in these very tight circles, and that's what I recreated for the funeral scene. And they had their palms extended out, so I really used that. That made a lot of sense to me: You see the open palm in all sorts of different religions and belief systems. You can even think when you go into yoga class: Are you going to put your palms up to receive or your palms down into the ground?

MC: Dance is often viewed in different lights in Christianity. Movement can be sinful, or it can be one of the most visceral ways to express emotion. How did it feel to thread that line of piety in your choreography?

CRH: I grew up in a very religious environment, and I think I was always meant to dance. But I also used dance and choreography as a young child to express the things I couldn't say out loud. That's very fascinating when thinking about religion, on either spectrum of things that you can't say that you're trying to get out in another way, or things that feel so big and inexplicable that there are no words, and this is why you have to move. When it's too much, then it has to come out in that way.

I think the less we're connected with our body, the more power other people have. It's like the more you are dancing and communicating through your body, the more in touch you are. So, of course, a way to strip people's power is to strip away using your body as a vehicle of expression.

It was very fun creating this movement because the movement is an expression of prayer. I really tried to make a very truthful choreography that, when you did it, you actually felt like you could communicate through it. It's quite simple because it's not about remembering the moves. It's something that you keep repeating, repeating, repeating, like a mantra, so that you can go to the other side.

Once she came back from the infirmary and decided, Having sex is the sin and this is what we can't do. I thought a lot about, Well, that energy doesn't just disappear, so where does it go? There are descriptions of them hugging each other—so I wanted it to feel like everything was intense, and when they hugged that other person, the hug was a 10 times tighter squeeze. It's almost like when you have a really good cry and all of a sudden you can see a little more clearly; that's kind of how I wanted them to live their lives. I wanted them to also feel like children where there's not this thing that's [taboo] because you're hugging someone and you're not married to them or whatever. They're all brothers and sisters. They're just all in love with each other in this really pure way, and they can move with each other and sort of tumble around. It feels free and genuine.

MC: Their physical movements become embedded in the beats of the soundtrack and score. Was that always in the music or something you added through the choreography?

CRH: It was a lot of back and forth, but I remember the first track I got had these breaths in it. It was fascinating to me because, as a dancer, you weirdly learn how not to breathe or show that you're breathing. I grew up in ballet, so it's especially like, How are you the quietest and the lightest? So hearing the breath was pretty radical for me, to be honest. It really changed all the choreography because now if it's in the sound, the movement needs to match that. We really got into slapping and hitting the body and the claps and things. Then Daniel would come in and see rehearsal, and I'm like, ‘Daniel, I added this thing where they're doing this thing, so can we add more claps in the music?’ And he would. It was a really nice back and forth.

But the first track that I got was so exciting because I knew that it originated from a hymn, but then I heard what he had done to it. It really freed me up of being like, Let's just go for it. Mona is giving us full creative freedom to just go.

MC: What was the process like of going from rehearsals in a standard practice room to being on set? Were certain scenes harder to choreograph once you saw the production design?

CRH: For sure. What's funny is, as a choreographer, when you watch it in the dance studio, you get to see the dance in its perfect form. And then all of a sudden, you put it onto a ship where you've got two feet by two feet, or in the woods where people are falling into holes or tripping over things. It all gets messed up, but there's also a beauty there. Granted, it can't all be a mess, but it reminds you that these are scenes existing in real life. While it is dancing, it's not performative.

Anytime we were on location, I really had to re-choreograph for the space. Sometimes that meant having to do almost a full re-choreography on the day, which was so stressful. I really wanted to make sure that they were using the space well. In the [Manchester] room with all the candles and all the dancers, they couldn't kick their legs as high as they wanted to or do whatever. But I actually think it helped because it humanized it even more. The biggest thing is that you feel like you could be in there doing that as well, and that it's not just reserved for professional dancers. The parameters really helped keep us in that grounded, human place.

MC: The “Hunger and Thirst” scene is a major contrast from the other dance numbers, considering it’s only Amanda Seyfried and shot very close up. Tell me about working on that.

CRH: It's probably my favorite dance I choreographed, actually. She's doing an entire dance, but it's very simple. The choreography I had given her was basically helping her move through that song in a very specific way. So while you don't see it, you feel it in the performance. That is just as exciting for me because I know what her limbs are doing off the screen, and I can think about them helping [with] what she's emotionally navigating at that moment. It's such a stunning scene and such a beautiful song.

MC: How was it like working with that main trio of actors—Amanda Seyfried, Lewis Pullman, and Thomason McKenzie—on so many different routines and choreography?

CRH: Amanda, she's so funny. Although she had done Les Mis and Mamma Mia!, this was such a different beast to take on. She has told me that it was very hard for her, but she worked her butt off. She took it on with such a masterful and open approach. She has a very interesting way of moving naturally that I really leaned into and found just so perfect. She has really intense, strong hands, and I made sure we saw a lot of the choreography come through that because her hands are amazing.

I don't know what Thomason’s background is, but she's a natural dancer, truly, with the way she picks up choreography and everything. And then Lewis, his mom was a professional modern dancer. I made instructional videos for everybody, and Mona told me that, basically, his mom was helping him learn.

I made sure that they are approaching it through their character—that they're not dropping their character to then dance. This is not supposed to look a certain way. It's just supposed to look the way that is truthful and honest to them and their body. That's always the joy for me of working with actors: They're going to give the movement a certain quality because they're thinking of it from a place of intentionality and their character. They needed to take the movement and make it their own, and everyone truly did.

MC: What do you envision for your career going forward? Do you plan to do more films like Ann Lee that stand out from the traditional style of musical movies?

CRH: I'm going to be making my next film because I'm a filmmaker as well. It's something that I'm writing, directing, and choreographing. It's interesting because it's not a musical. There's only a little bit of singing, which people always get thrown by. It's acting and dancing. You don't always need to sing.

I'm really so grateful that Mona's film is out there right now. Yes, it's a musical, but look at what a musical can be. I had a screening for my dance community in New York earlier this week. We’re all contemporary dancers, and everybody was so excited that you can see contemporary movement being used in a way that feels like the way that the dancers want to move. Sometimes the things that get the big budgets and get seen are just not the way all dancers really want to move.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.