"As soon as I heard No Matter How Much I thought of German choreographer Pina Bausch. I had not thought of Pina Bausch in years, and yet, the moment the piano set its chunky, perfect rhythms to the task of thrashing around in my headspace… there she was. Clear, and obvious.

The idea of combining her style of dance with this specific piece of music was immediately exciting. It was a tremendous feeling, one which lasted approximately 9 seconds before it came into conflict with the fear that was shooting up my spine like a rocket, propelled by a single thought - I know absolutely nothing about dance. I saw a documentary about Pina Bausch once because it was made by a director that I’m very fond of; that’s the only reason I even know who she was, and honestly, she’s the only choreographer I can name that isn’t Bob Fosse.

I took solace, however, in an unlikely and stressful place - the subway scene from Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession. Isabelle Adjani's pained, unrelenting, and thoroughly awe-inspiring freakout is certainly one of the greatest freakouts in cinema history, if not the greatest, and to my mind there was a striking similarity between the style of movement she exhibits in that scene and the style of dance employed in some of Pina's work. Furthermore, Possession, which the title alone is enough to imply, is a (somewhat) literal representation of a thought that occurred to me while watching some of Pina's dances - these people are not in control of their bodies. Through this lens I could see some of the dance in Isabelle's movements and some of the cinema and the narrative in Pina's movements, and when I made this connection, I began to suspect that my perceived knowledge gap might be more negotiable than I initially suspected. My confidence grew steadily as I began developing the concept, and by the time the bandleader informed me that the drummer's wife was a dancer/choreographer, I knew that there was never really any other choice. This was the video that always needed to be made. We were simply lucky enough to discover it, and I was lucky enough to get to direct it.

Working with Meghann on the choreography was an absolute delight - she effortlessly took the mess of ideas tumbling around my mind and translated them into the language of movement, but in the Pina Bausch dialect. Watching the transformation occur was nothing short of miraculous, and the element I was frightened of at the outset proved to be one of my favorite parts of the process, as stepping outside of your comfort zone so often tends to be.

Visually, I found myself drawn to another German source - German Expressionism, a movement whose pursuits produced films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The visual design of these films takes the idea of externalizing a character's interior world to an extreme rarely seen outside of these films, and as a result of their illusory intentions, there's a compelling fake-ness to them... they are so stylized that they overcome their visibility as set decoration through sheer gestalt effect. Even so, the sense of a constructed reality persists, and ultimately, reveals itself to be as much a narrative choice as an aesthetic (and/or budgetary) one. In the end, we see the difference between fantasy and reality, but simply knowing the difference is a very different thing from making the right choice.

I've avoided stating my exact intentions with the narrative and visual stylings of the video proper, which is quite by design, as I believe that the video speaks for itself. However, in the comments above, you may find some clues to those intentions; should you happen upon any of these, you may reasonably assume them to be correct. Or, more thrillingly from my perspective, you may freely interpret the video however you wish."