Nosferatu dancing to Lady Gaga

Source: nosferatu dancing to lady ga ga, Brendan Donnelly, 1:02, uploaded 2009-05-18, playlist index 353.

Brendan Donnelly’s one-minute upload presents a performer in Nosferatu makeup as a contestant auditioning for Dancing with the Stars. The title identifies the soundtrack as Lady Gaga. The description supplies the audition premise, whilst the video supplies the performance.

The audition tape

The clip opens close to black fabric and a printed T-shirt before the performer moves into the room. The costume combines a white bald face, dark eye makeup, pointed ears and a black cloak. A U.S. flag hangs behind them, with a Criss Angel: Mindfreak poster and a The Crow poster filling the wall below it. The room stays ordinary and brightly lit, which gives the supernatural figure a domestic stage.

The movement stays in place and works through the upper body. Hands cover the face, fingers spread into stiff poses, arms sweep across the body and the cloak opens as the performer turns. The head tilts and the shoulders roll with a deliberate, theatrical slowness. Pose follows pose, with the cloak giving each turn extra movement. The horror costume remains in place whilst the body performs the part of a television audition.

The camera holds the same room for almost the whole clip. The performer gradually comes closer to the lens, then moves with enough force to blur the final frames. At one minute, the clip stays with the audition premise and its physical joke. The humour sits in the collision between a silent-film monster’s appearance and the hopeful format of a celebrity dance tryout.

Limits

YouTube provides no English or German caption track for this upload. Its metadata gives the title, Brendan Donnelly as the uploader, a 62-second duration, a 2009-05-18 upload date, the category Comedy and a description calling it an audition tape. The metadata does not name the Lady Gaga track or establish whether the performer submitted an actual audition to the programme.

The clip supports an account of its costume, room, camera and movement. It gives no basis for identifying the performer, explaining the production beyond the description, or claiming an outcome. The uploader’s blog is the only further link named in the description.

Further reading / references

• thebrendandonnelly.blogspot.com, the uploader’s blog named in the YouTube description. It was not needed to reconstruct the clip.