I'm going to go out on record and say that I'm not a huge fan of Late Night with Seth Meyers. I know its early in its run, but what they've managed to create so far feels truly bizarre - and not in a good way. From the fact that band leader Fred Armisen never seems to be there, to the fact that it just doesn't feel like Meyers even wants to be hosting the show, it's not exactly a fun hour of television. It feels like nothing on that show has really landed the way the people behind it intended it to.
Case in point is last night's truly crazybananapants performance of "Chandelier" by Sia. You may remember that Sia performed this song on Ellen a few weeks ago, and had the star of the music video, Maddie Ziegler, basically recreate it. It was fun and promoted the music video.
Sia's Late Night performance takes a different route, however, and features Girls creator and star Lena Dunham doing her own interpretive dance to the song in a Sia wig and ... all-white pantsuit.
It's a well-known fact that Lena is a fan of choreographer Ryan Heffington's work on "Chandelier" and "We Exist," going so far as to declare this a golden age of dance music videos. Maybe she should have left it at that. Lena's dance is mind-bendingly cringey, full of flailing, toilet paper, and punching cardboard. Sia, impressively, sings the entire song face down on a bunk bed. It's a incomprehensible mix of parody, homage, and pantsuit.
I think this marks the end of the fun we were all having with this video. We all enjoyed the original video, we all said "neat!" when they did the thing on Ellen. Now it feels like a bucket of ice cold water was just poured over our heads. It's time to go home. Maybe that was the point.
This is not so much embarrassing for Lena Dunham = it's more embarrassing for Seth Meyers, who you imagine sitting at his desk, watching Lena Dunham do whatever it is she was doing, thinking "this is the kind of show we have become, where we let Lena Dunham do this."
Watch the video below. Enjoy.
