Why We’re Enthralled By the ‘Matilda’ Musical Viral Choreography

Ellen Kane wasn’t thinking about TikTok when she was choreographing the number “Revolting Children” in Netflix’s upcoming Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical, based on the classic children’s book and subsequent Tony-winning musical. “Everyone online I’m told is like, Oh, it’s so TikTok,” she says. “It’s not actually that at all. It’s based on lots of different styles.” Nonetheless, TikTok has found her work and done its TikTok thing.

A clip Netflix released from the film—which is out theatrically in the US December 9 and hits the streaming service on Christmas—has gone viral. Kane isn’t on social media, but her 17-year-old son has alerted her that Jojo Siwa is doing her dance and that Missy Elliott retweeted a version that added her song “Lose Control” on top of the clip of the schoolchildren tearing it up, dance-wise. That one really got Kane excited. “I’m not really fangirly, but I grew up with her,” she says. “It’s insane. That woman is a legend.” (And, yes, she admits there are definitely some homages to Missy videos in the choreography.) 

The clip that has one Twitter user asking, “why is this Matilda Musical choreography EATING like this?” comes late in the movie after the youth of Crunchem Hall have defeated the evil Miss Trunchbull (Emma Thompson) with help from the telekinetic powers of child-genius Matilda (Alisha Weir). The kids, newly liberated, sing about how they are “revolting children,” the word “revolting” taking on a double meaning in composer Tim Minchin’s extremely clever lyrics. As they come down the halls, they sing that they “can S-P-L how we like, if enough of us are wrong, wrong is right.” 

Kane knows Minchin’s musical tongue-twisters back and forward, having served as the associate choreographer on the West End and Broadway productions of the musical. But her history with the project made her hesitant to accept the gig for the movie, which she describes as a “totally different” beast. “Initially I was like, can I really reimagine this story? Because I’ve known it inside and out,” she says. “But screen gives you so many more opportunities.” The “Revolting Children” moment is a great example of that. 

Director Matthew Warchus, who also worked on the stage production, wanted the sequence to feel like “the children were water, bursting through dams coming through school,” Kane remembers. “That would mean that the camera was being pushed back by the sheer force of that travel.” It’s a high order made even more difficult by the beats in Minchin’s complicated composition. “It’s on sevens,” Kane explains of the count, noting that fours would be more typical. “It gives it that off-kilter feel.” 

Instead of using high-tech rotating corridors—one of the initial ideas they’d considered—Kane realized she could simulate the effect of children bouncing off the walls with moves borrowed from parkour, enlisting a parkour coordinator who works with children. Once settled on that concept, she had to work out the speed at which the dancers would travel the length of the school hallway, while making sure there was space for other performers to flip in the background. “I think people did think I was quite crazy,” she says. “I just kept adding and adding and adding and I had to rehearse it obviously within an inch of its life because it’s incredibly challenging. It’s pushing all of those artists, those children, to the edge.” 

In the totality of the “Revolting Children” sequence, which spills out onto the Crunchem playground, there are about 225 children, but it’s one that has grabbed the internet’s attention: Meesha Garbett, the girl in the red beret, who plays the role of Hortensia. Hortensia, one of the older children at Crunchem, co-leads the song with Bruce (Charlie Hodson-Prior), Matilda’s classmate and probably best known to Dahl fans as the boy who is forced to eat an entire chocolate cake as a punishment. The hallway bit is designed so Garbett commands your eye, and Kane praises her prodigious talent. “What’s incredible about her is what she has given it is the power of an adult,” Kane explains. “She’s not dancing like a kid. She’s coming for you.” Kane however also noted that she’s surrounded by an equally impressive ensemble. “Props to the kids [who] are behind her because they are equally amazing,” she says.