C’mon Tigre: Twist Into Any Shape

Animator Donato Sansone mines the internet for meme-worthy dance in the band’s addictive new music video.

Kaleidoscopic music duo C’mon Tigre describes their latest release, Twist Into Any Shape, as “an exhortation to change, to turn into any form or substance that makes you feel better.” It mixes the melodies of Sub-Saharan Africa with the music of northern Europe; a cocktail of distant musical influences inspired by the imaginary encounter between Fela Kuti and Caribou.

The corresponding music video, just like the track, is an esoteric cocktail of visuals that were created by experimental animator and compositor Donato Sansone, with story development and concept by filmmaker and video artist Marco Molinelli.

Watching Twist Into Any Shape is like going down a Reddit hole filled with posts of frenzied dance styles from around the world. Sansone is a master manipulator of creating viral content—he has already stacked millions of views for his expertly edited Ghost Crash video online—and has mined the internet for material to create the visuals for this short film. With a punk attitude, he uses video collage, animation, and split-screen techniques to create a circus of dancing visuals that are difficult to look away from.

“Twist Into Any Shape aims to merge the aesthetic experience of advertisements and video art (Bruce Nauman) with the idea of dancing,” says Sansone. “It is meant to be a joyous act that allows the body to mutate in form and content.”

During the video, a mischievous hand tugs and pushes at pixels on the screen to hilarious effect, creating a flow of surreal transformations that are evocative of inane meme culture. “The idea was to manipulate the dancing bodies in a grotesque and playful way,” says Sansone, “ through the means of visual contamination and fusion in an attitude that is not only grunge or punk, but also surreal and cartoonish, with an end result that is fun and bizarre.”