Paul Harris

Here Paul Harris, Choreographer of ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’, talks to Francesca McCoid, Manager of the UK Choreographers Directory, about his experience of working on this film.

Paul Harris is an established Choreographer with extensive experience of working in Film, Theatre and Television in a wide range of dance styles including swing, salsa, historical dance, tango, theatre dance, movement direction, ballroom and latin american dancing.
His credits include 'Entrapment' (20th Century Fox- Starring Catherine Zeta Jones and Sean Connery)
'Bleak House' (BBC- Starring Charles Dance and Pauline Collins)
'The Other Boleyn Girl' (Sony Pictures- Starring Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman and Eric Bana)
'The Entertainer' (The Old Vic- Starring Robert Lindsay)
and the recently released ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’ (Warner Bros)

Paul Harris, Choreographer of ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’, in conversation with Francesca McCoid, Dance UK.

Francesca: In the film, ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’, the choreography isn’t ‘traditional dance’ and your credit is Choreographer- Wand Combat. Why do you think the Director wanted a choreographer to create the wand combat, rather than a Fight Director?

Paul: David Yates didn’t want it to be a mortal fight. As some of the characters are 600 year old wizards, he felt that a mortal fight wouldn’t be fitting. David felt it needed a heightened form of movement and one that was unique to Harry Potter. The initial brief was that it needed to have grace and artistry but that it also needed have an element of violence. However, he didn’t want it to be ‘The Matrix’, ‘Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon’, or ‘Lord of the Rings’ so it was about establishing a physical language, a ‘grammar’ for the use of the wand in the world of Harry Potter. So I think David felt the element of grace was something that could be delivered well by a choreographer.

Francesca: How did you research for the wand choreography and what time period did you have to do this?

David Yates called me and said he wanted to discuss something with me to do with Harry Potter. I went into Leavesden on the Tuesday of that week for a meeting about it. I had plans to go to Asia, but I was obviously prepared to cancel or shorten this trip in order to do the choreography for ‘Harry Potter the Order of the Phoenix!’
We then had an extensive discussion about his requirements. The schedule was decided, which was based around Gary Oldman’s schedule. I went to Asia and came back a week early.
Although this was now August and they had been filming since January, I was given a two week pre-production period to read all the books, watch the previous films and look at the blocking of how David envisaged the wand combat scenes. I also had to get my head around the task ahead as it was quite daunting; with four films having already been made I was very aware that I shouldn’t undermine what had already been done.
I couldn’t create a specific movement for a specific spell because a lot of the spells had been successfully executed in a classroom situation in the previous films with little physical action behind them. So I created a set of positions for attack and defence, from which any spell could be launched or defended. From these positions I was able to build the choreography. I felt that another area that could be built upon was the use of the inner being of the Wizard in the power of the spell. What we’d seen so far in the films was the kids doing magic, now we were seeing the heavyweight Wizards, I felt it was important to bring out more of their inner power. In this film, when Harry is teaching the others how to cast a spell in the ‘room of requirement’, he tells them to think about a strong emotion to cast and sustain a spell, so in the text it actually implies that it is the inner being that has an effect on the spells.

Francesca: Did you work with the actors on movement training before teaching the choreography to them? How long did you have to work with the actors when creating the wand choreography?

After my pre-production period, there was about a three week rehearsal period in which I worked with everyone in the film at some point, including Helena Bonham Carter, Gary Oldman, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Gambon and Jason Isaacs. I also worked with the death eaters every day and of course Dan Radcliffe and the other young stars. Everyone went through the same process, they all learnt the combat positions and how to string together combinations using those positions as a basis. I built the choreography out of these positions, so I treated it a bit like ballet. I gave the actors the choreography and then encouraged them to personalise it for themselves so that the style was befitting for each character. David Yates talked me through the story of each dual and I then came up with the choreography.

Francesca: You have extensive experience of working with actors on both films and plays, how is choreographing for a play different to choreographing for a film?

What will be readable on screen is sometimes completely different to what will be readable on stage. There can be a fundamental difference between what is going to work on camera and what will work on stage. This does depend though on what the choreography is created for, for example, ‘West Side Story’ uses more or less the same choreography for the film and stage Production. However the Director of ‘West Side Story’ was a choreographer, so the choreography, although conceived for the stage, was subsequently filmed with the intention of keeping the truth and spirit of the choreography. Unless you have situation like that, choreographing for stage and for film can be very different.
What is interesting for me is that despite the range of dance styles I have experience of, (Paul has choreographed big period drama’s such as ‘Bleak House’, 'The Other Boleyn Girl' and ‘Inkheart’ and has also published the IDTA, UKA, NATD and BATD syllabus for Merengue, Salsa and Mambo) the two biggest things I’ve choreographed aren’t actually dancing; ‘Entrapment’ and ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’, they are movement direction, but definitely still choreography. The wand combat sequence between Gary Oldman, Jason Isaacs, Daniel Radcliffe and Helena Bonham Carter in ‘Harry Potter the Order of the Phoenix’ is as much a piece of real time choreography as any dance piece I’ve ever done. Whereas the dual between Ralph Fiennes and Michael Gambon was more a series of movements which created a specific (more powerful) spell. It was also very much about me working with the special effects team; what was the action that created the rope of fire, or the ball of water, or the glass that was sent spearing towards the other actor. I knew David Yates wanted something artistic with almost a balletic quality, but he also wanted something that wasn’t flouncy, it still had to have a reality.
For me, another thing that has been very interesting over the last two years has been the variety of work; ‘Harry Potter the Order of the Phoenix’ was a completely different experience to things like ‘Sense and Sensibility’, 'Cheetah Girls 2 ', ‘The Entertainer’ and re-working my salsa technique book for the IDTA.

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