The Movements: The OA's Controversial Dance Explained By Creator

Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij are no strangers to bringing out-there ideas to the screen in movies like "The Sound of My Voice" and TV series such as "A Murder at the End of the World." However, their most challenging and complex story may be their Netflix series from a few years back, "The OA."

The show follows Prairie (Marling), a woman who mysteriously returns after having disappeared for seven years. Though she refuses to tell anyone where she went or what happened to her, she does reveal the truth to a group of five whom she handpicks to learn of her legacy. This culminates in a type of special reality-bending dance called The Movements, which is used by her followers to prevent a school shooting at the end of Season 1.

While many criticized the idea of a type of dance being used to stop a disaster in "The OA," Marling and Batmanglij have defended the decision. "I think that the Movements felt like a call to returning to the body and other intelligences that we have abandoned that are possibly greater than the linear, rational thinking of the mind sometimes," Marling told The Hollywood Reporter. "It's one of the most primal, immediate, ancient forms of communication."

While Brit Marling stands behind using The Movements in "The OA," she also admitted that the first instinct of some of the performers involved was to laugh at the premise of the scene. However, as the actors spent time practicing the scene and learning its choreography, they began to have something of a transcendent experience. "In the beginning, you're embarrassed, you're ashamed, you laugh a little to make it feel okay," she explained to the Hollywood Reporter. "By the time we were doing those movements for two or three months on end, something otherworldly starts to happen in your own body and starts to happen between people who are doing them."

For his part, Zal Batmanglij minced no words when it came to the judgment many fans delivered on The Movements in "The OA." I think it's unfortunate when serious reviewers call it interpretive dance because that's rude to the art form," he said. "I think disparaging something you don't understand, while a very normal thing, I expect more from serious people." 

While "The OA" was canceled after its second season, fans still eagerly champion the series and have even tried to get it brought back to Netflix for a third season. Even star Jason Isaacs has said that the "door's not shut" on the show coming back. Perhaps a performance of The Movements outside Netflix HQ could help.