After his entrancing performance for Take Me To Church, ballet prodigy Sergei Polunin is now the protagonist in Hozier's latest music video for Movement, directed by Christopher Barrett and Luke Taylor, aka Us.

The dancer faces his inner selves in a self-reflection through dance, responding to each move in perfect time.

US:

"Andrew and Sergei had been in touch ever since Sergei danced to Take Me to Church, with the hope of collaborating in the future. [The treatment for] Movement was actually written with Sergei in mind, and as we discovered more about his powerful personal story, the message behind it became all the more overwhelming.

"We joined the project a few months ago, with Sergei attached but no real concept. As we listened we kept coming back to this idea of self reflection, being able to take a step back and look at the decisions you’ve made. It’s that movement within our own minds, how you can end up battling with yourself. This is where the idea of multiple Sergeis came into play. These multiples represent inner demons and versions of ourself we all fight with, a notion we felt Sergei could relate to and express perfectly. Having been impressed by Sergei's acting ability we were keen to tap into this as well as his dancing.

"The process and lead up to the shoot was a strange one. We tend to over plan our shoots in probably way too much detail, but here we were totally relying on Sergei, his performance and interpretation of the song. Safe to say he was unbelievable. We talked at great lengths with him before the shoot about the performance and movement but Sergei felt the only way to achieve the tone we desired was to not pre-choreograph the piece. He wanted to do it live on the day.

"We had no idea how he would know where the other characters would be let alone dance with them. But to our utter astonishment he nailed it almost every time. We had a mix and overlay on set. So after a take Sergei would review. Once he was happy he would go for a wardrobe/character change come back and dance as the other character. We would then overlay the two takes and it was there. Every time. He managed to this with three dancers at once. It was such a joy to watch.

"Overall the project had been a total pleasure, collaborating with Andrew, Sergei and our DOP and good friend Sebastian Wintero who became so integral to the flow of this film. We would like to thank all the team on this one. It was a very long day but everyone got behind it and made into something we’ll never forget"