‘House of the Dragon’ Episode 5 Wedding Dance Was Based on Birds
House of the Dragon had another memorable wedding in episode 5. Like Game of Thrones’ Red Wedding, it began as a celebration and ended in blood. Before the bloodshed, the wedding included a dance. The episode’s director, Clare Kilner said they based the dance on birds.
[Warning: This article contains spoilers for House of the Dragon Episode 5.]
Kilner was a guest on the House of the Dragons podcast on Oct. 16. She was talking about the ninth episode which had just aired, but shared this tidbit from episode 5 which she also directed. House of the Dragon Season 1 is now streaming on HBO Max.
Birds influenced the ‘House of the Dragon’ wedding dance
When the wedding party danced in House of the Dragon episode 5, it was up to Kilner to portray the dance. She relied on birds to give it a unique look.
‘House of the Dragon’ Episode 5: Rhaenyra and Laenor’s Conversation on the Beach, Explained
“5 was so different because we had to create a House of the Dragon dance,” Kilner said on the House of the Dragon podcast. “In the script it says they dance but not how they dance. I needed to think about I don’t want it to be a sort of Jane Austen dancing because that just wouldn’t be right. So I enlisted a choreographer who actually worked on Janice Beard as well. Francesca Jaynes, she does amazing work on huge movies. We talked about what this dance would be and we started talking about dragons and birds. We found some birds to take their movements and emulate and build that into the dance.”
The ‘House of the Dragon’ dancers couldn’t be too expert
It was also important to Kilner that the House of the Dragon dance didn’t look too good. The people of Westeros aren’t trained dancers.
We went to Pineapple Studios in London and worked on it with a fantastic group of dancers. It was really nice, there were dancers of all ages as well because I really wanted them to feel like they were courtiers, not 20-year dancers. I didn’t want them to dance too well. I literally had to say don’t dance too well. Our first pass, it was a little bit too contemporary so we sort of had to bring it back a bit and it was a bit scary. I felt oh my God, people are going to watch this all over the world. They better like it. They had to do these slightly odd dragon-like movements. I don’t want the actors to feel silly.
Clare Kilner, House of the Dragon podcast, 10/16/22
The dance was only one issue with the wedding episode
Besides the dance, Kilner had her hands full with House of the Dragon Episode 5. And not just with the violence, either. Simply filming the wedding was a challenge.
“The wedding took many days to shoot,” Kilner said. “I approached it with a head table with all the royals on it. We had to get all that coverage and then we had to get Cole and all his reaction to everything that was happening there. Then we did steadicam when they were all dancing and then when the fight broke out, we were handheld four cameras get in there with everybody.”
