IT GIRL! DANI VITALE On Creating Art & Cinema For Anne Hathaway As Mother Mary
“3+ years working on a life-changing, mind-bending, reality-shifting creative masterpiece with the most talented souls.” – Dani Vitale, Lead Choreographer, Mother Mary
The most powerful moment in the movie, Mother Mary, takes you inside the depths of fictional popstar Mother Mary’s soul. Portrayed by Anne Hathaway, 30 minutes into the film the character performs a nearly 3-minute dance inside the workspace of her former costume designer, Sam, played by Michaela Coel. In dead silence.
It’s a gripping moment. Dramatic. Dark. Raw. It’s like feeling your soul hit the floor. It’s in stark contrast to the film’s opening performance, where a bold and confident Mother Mary, standing in darkness, struts onto a stage in gleaming 4-inch thigh-high stiletto black boots, suddenly bathed in all the ethereal glitter, glamour, and color you’d expect from a popstar on a world tour.
For Lead Choreographer and Concert Creative Producer Dani Vitale, Mother Mary was a 3-year-plus love affair—a project that’s been life-changing, with extraordinary parallels to her own career, including rediscovering herself after heartache and using that emotion to be exceptional. For Hathaway, the film was a personal breakthrough. Playing a character reminiscent of Lady Gaga onstage, director David Lowery credits Taylor Swift as a major inspiration. At its core, the film explores the fractured relationship between Mother Mary and Sam, examining love, loss, the pressure of fame, and a reconciliation left to the audience’s interpretation.
Inside Dance got a backstage pass to Vitale and Hathaway’s collaboration, breakthrough moments, who they are as artists, and how the choreography and the character drove the soul of the film from each of their perspectives, in two parts: a conversation with both artists and an extended interview with Vitale. What they shared with us, and what you see in the final cut, represents countless hours of blood, sweat, and tears that created an unbreakable bond. For as much as working with Hathaway changed Vitale’s life, Vitale, in turn, changed hers.
I loved the process of doing this. I loved having my time where I got to live as a dancer. - Anne Hathaway
CREATING MOTHER MARY
Dani Vitale and Anne Hathaway are chatting with us via Zoom on Hathaway’s first day off in three years. Vitale is holed up in a North Carolina condo, already onto her next major project. Hathaway, who has five major films releasing in 2026, including the sequel to the 2006 cult-classic Devil Wears Prada, and Christopher Nolan’s latest massive epic The Odyssey, is en route to her son’s school performance of Shrek. It’s remarkably normal, like a sitting-in-a-coffee-shop-with- your-best friends vibe. The “It Girl” energy is off the charts.
Their conversation is framed by the joy in their reunion. It’s free-flowing and light, yet incredibly retrospective. Their camaraderie, love, and respect for each other are apparent from the get-go.
Our interview was an opportunity to go inside the choreographic process and how Vitale methodically and beautifully created Hathaway’s character, Mother Mary. From preproduction to their first moments surrounded by four walls inside an empty studio, to the day everyone on set stopped cold to watch Hathaway’s vulnerability truly live and move as her character, our time together went by in a flash. And made an everlasting impression.
To prepare for the movie, Hathaway and Vitale spent more often than not eight hours a day training, including extensive instruction in stilettos for the popstar concert performances. Hathaway found inspiration early on watching everyone from Natalia Osipova to the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater in preparation for the film. She journaled. She explored. She immersed.
With both traveling around the world on multiple projects over three years, the duo reinvented ways to stay in the space of Mother Mary. “Dani came with me, and we would find random dance studios in out-of-the-way places, and we just worked,” Hathaway said.
Their collective vision and deep passion for the character are felt throughout each spell-binding scene. Together, they created a mesmerizing breadth of work derived from Lowery’s evocative and haunting script, channeling a language without boundaries in the universal way only dance can. They navigated art within the confines of film in a process rooted in the purity of dance technique, passion, and of a character stripped down and gradually built back up. The obstacles they initially faced set the tone and depth for a journey neither could have ever prepared for.
Mother Mary was essentially shot in two phases: all acting and contemporary scenes in 2023, and the popstar concert scenes in 2024, which, as we quickly learned, inadvertently became the perfect path. The movie also fell right in the middle of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike, and was absent of the final music for much of the time. Because of that, at times, conventional wisdom had to be thrown out the studio door, opening the gates for pure instinct to take over. As our conversation progressed, it was easy to let Vitale and Hathaway tell the story uninterrupted, starting with Hathaway’s first moments with the script.
“David Lowery wrote a tremendous script that was emotional, beautifully poetic, and quite dense when it came to dialogue,” Hathaway told us. “I thought the music would be the foundation block that I would build the character from. But rarely do things unfold in a linear fashion when it comes to art—the music didn’t arrive until the second year of the film, and we made the majority of the movie in the first year. We worked without a clear understanding of what the final sound would be, but we still had to make a character that was true unto herself.”
Without the actual music, which includes seven original songs performed in character by Hathaway, and were produced and written by Jack Antonoff, Charli XCX, and FKA Twigs, an even larger space opened. Vitale got creative. She intuitively taught Hathaway how to move, how to listen to music differently, and how to allow herself to step outside of her comfort zone to transcend the work. Hathaway also had to give herself permission to just feel what Mother Mary would do in each moment.
“One of the things Dani kept impressing on me was this idea that [Mother Mary] is the artist, and anything she does is the way that it should be,” she said. “I kept waiting for the music to give me permission, but because the music didn’t happen for the longest time, it had to be something else that released the permission. The artist had to arrive anyway.”
Discovering Hathaway’s process was a learning experience for Vitale as well.
“Annie and I both are creators who like to gather as much information and tangible parameters in advance so that we can then create the work in that space,” Vitale said. “When you put both of us in one room, and you know you’re not going to have the one thing that really drives who this character is, you go inside these four walls with a mirror, and you figure it out. We went all over the board with music and artists to cover our bases to make sure she was as well- rounded as possible. Looking back, being without the music was the greatest gift.”
Hathaway’s evolution throughout the process encapsulated what Vitale envisioned on every level. And then exceeded it. Seeing it all unfold was life-changing for both.
“Dani and I decided to make the visual language of Mother Mary, her sound,” Hathaway said. “At a certain point, it dawned on us that we had to lean into what this experience was, even though it was different from what we had ever experienced.”
For Hathaway’s character to succeed, the dance studio had to be a safe place for exploring and growing, and free of any negative self-talk—something Vitale’s ballet teacher, Courtney Laves-Mearini, owner of Cleveland City Dance, instilled in her as a teen. Vitale picked up on Hathaway’s urgency to be perfect and the emotions that followed. She also recognized their collective nerdiness when it came to research and preparation, and allowed Hathaway the space and grace to discover the movement, albeit with guidance, while being intensely direct when she needed to be. The result is stunning.
“This movie is—you see Anne in a way you’ve never seen her before,” Vitale said. “Annie needed to actually really take control of the creative space and protect it as a sacred space,” she continued, emphasizing the importance of Hathaway respecting herself as an artist as they began to create everything from popstar performances including epic walks in heels and learning to hold a microphone, starting with the gritty barn dance that became the film’s signature.
Recognizing the scope and intensity of what needed to be choreographed, Vitale studied Hathaway’s process and how it would align with the script and Vitale’s own teaching technique. The first thing she did was design a way to train Hathaway as a dancer, and then to choreograph with her.
“Every week we asked ourselves: Where’s the music? Who is Mother Mary? How does she walk? How does she sit? Is she sexy? Sassy? Cool? It was like we went to boot camp,” Vitale said. She felt that starting with the popstar pieces wouldn’t provide the emotion Hathaway needed to discover to develop Mother Mary. Instead, she focused on contemporary, emotive phrases.
Because Vitale and Hathaway listen to music differently—Hathaway focusing on the lyrics, with Vitale naturally gravitating to the music and the beat—an interesting dichotomy emerged during the process, which ultimately proved to be an incredible turning point in their journey. It also led to one of Vitale’s most epic teaching moments.
To move Hathaway beyond the words and whether or not they would mean anything to her character, at one point Vitale had Hathaway listening and moving to everyone from Ariana Grande, Alanis Morissette, Lenny Kravitz, Madonna, Paula Abdul, Rosalía, Enrique Iglesias, and Shakira so that Hathaway could organically learn to move to things she that didn’t make sense at all to Mother Mary, or to Hathaway herself, at first. The process translated into their entire body of work.
“I’ll never forget the day that this clicked,” Vitale remembers. “Rosalía just put out Motomami. And I watched Anne feel the music for the very first time. I had chills. The biggest change for her as a performer was dancing and performing to things that she couldn’t understand. From that day on, we skyrocketed.”
It might be the best song ever written in the history of songs. - Mother Mary
FULL CIRCLE
Through dance itself, Hathaway also came to understand the character of Mother Mary in a different way. “All of a sudden, we learned that Mother Mary is all about arms,” she said. “For 20 years, she’s been singing about falling to her knees. The process was actually very movement-led. For me, it was the first identifying marker of who she was. I don’t think I would have understood that in the same way if we hadn’t gone as deep as we did of her being able to express herself physically. I was very lucky that I had someone as loving as Dani in the room with me.”
Their respect for each other as artists is so apparent, and it allowed them to further create and develop a hypnotic character who takes her audience on a journey of deep physical and mental pain, self-discovery, recognition, and reconciliation, both for Mother Mary and for Hathaway herself. Hathaway had taken dance classes before, but never felt she was properly connecting her brain to her body.
Being in Mother Mary changed all of that.
“I would feel so confused by the divide, and I couldn’t ever imagine that I would ever be able to cross it,” she said. “To have created a work with Dani—it’s just a physical expression that I am so proud of to have created something of beauty with my body. I never, ever, thought that would happen.”
Achieving such a new and deep body of work at this stage in her career, Hathaway feels the process and result in her soul in a way she could have never imagined. It gave her a relationship with dance she’ll have forever—and something deeper far beyond the credits.
“To be able to have a sustained relationship with dance, it’s finding the grace inside of the passion. Every dancer I know who has made a career out of it is obsessed with dance,” she said. “That level of passion, that level of drive, that level of undeniability about what you want to do and what your body wants, it’s a devotion. It’s a calling. For me, discovering that grace now, between acknowledging that I couldn’t be working any harder than I am, this is the best I have to offer—it’s not quite where I
want it to be, but I’m proud of myself. It transformed me as a person.”
The barn dance scene in Sam’s studio reveals Hathaway at her most vulnerable. Spooky, yet soul-quenching. It’s also Vitale’s favorite.
She created a dance that is shattering—an exemplary blend of contemporary, modern, pop, lyrical, and intensely theatrical movement. Vitale describes it as a standalone piece. “I wanted the barn dance to be something that people reference, whether it be the mood or the performance. I wanted it to live in people’s brains,” she said.
In the scene, Mother Mary offers to show Sam a new routine, and in turn, Sam forces her to perform it without music. Getting there had its own effect on everyone involved. Describing this particular evolution, Vitale noted, “I had to teach a person who’s never danced like that how to dance and phrase movement without music. We did it to Max Richter and FKA Twigs to get the emotion. I really wanted her to push herself and to jump headfirst and try some of it without music to feel how she wanted to time things, and she wound up being able to do it.”
The result proved to be exactly what Vitale envisioned emotionally, spiritually, and physically.
“When we went and shot the barn dance, and when Annie did her dance, when she performed it full out in the room the first time, it was unbelievable. It was groundbreaking. You had chills. You felt sick. When she did it in character, in costume, with the hair, the makeup, the lights, the environment… to watch grown men—German men—holding booms have tears and to watch the hair on their arms stand up—it was an experience I will never forget.”
Everything Everywhere All at Once - Dani Vitale
IT GIRL ERA
Now Vitale is pulling back the curtains on a new era. She told us if she had to headline her own life in this moment, she’d call it ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ sharing, “In 2018 and 2019, I was driving DoorDash in a Range Rover. Every time, no matter how big or small the job is, I do it, and I am just so thankful and grateful for all of it. I just live life like that.”
Her current hype song, she says, is “Gosh” by Jamie xx, and she’s so ready for the next chapter doing what she loves—to continue being the voice, to be bigger and bolder than ever before. From that little girl from the Midwest creating shows in her driveway while channeling Tarantino to walking the red carpet and global recognition, Vitale is actually just getting started.
“I just love now being able to be that voice in the room for whether it be artists or dancers,” she said. “Here I am going from live performances to music videos to award shows to TV to movies. I really love that as a choreographer, I’ve been able to go all over the place because I do think choreographers are sometimes pigeonholed, and I really love that I’m constantly switching up the creative process.”
With the reward even sweeter once the struggle has been felt and overcome, Mother Mary set the stage for both to move forward, knowing they had given every piece of themselves to the project. Hathaway calls it divine timing,
“10 years ago, I wouldn’t have been ready for this. I didn’t have the character that was required for this journey,” Hathaway said. “That feeling of being in my head, and just honestly all of the things you have to just lay down to be able to let go, I didn’t know how to do that yet. I do believe in divine timing. To have discovered another gear at 40 when the conventional wisdom is I’m supposed to be shutting down, I just feel like I’m catching fire because I have all this new information. It makes me believe, ‘What else don’t we know? What else is possible?’”
Mother Mary also put everything into perspective for Vitale.
“That was the dream, to work with someone who was so raw but so committed to the performance aspect of it, the emotion of it, and the heart and the soul, because that you can’t teach at all,” she said. “Throughout this process, Annie and I are dancing and we’re doing movement, it’s actually life-changing and psychologically-changing. It gives you such an awareness of yourself, your body, and others. As hard as it is, it’s the most rewarding gift to give. That was the most beautiful part of the process with Annie, regardless of whether she could do a tendu.”
Vitale gave Hathaway the gift of dance and a renewed, bold belief in herself. In turn, Vitale gave herself an experience she’ll cherish every moment of every day, and the permission to believe anything is possible. She is so grateful for the experience Mother Mary gave her and for having created such a broad scope of work with Hathaway. And now the stage is waiting for whatever comes next.
“I never had to ask Annie to give me more, ever. I think it’s something that will live forever. I wake up every day, and I could literally cry right now. Doing this with Annie, we work and love so aggressively and so ferociously. I do feel like this is my resurgence back into where I was headed.”
See exclusive bonus coverage, “Through Vitale’s Lens,” coming soon to InsideDance.com and in the July issue of Inside Dance magazine. Preorder the issue here.
SPECIAL THANKS TO DANI VITALE AND ANNE HATHAWAY
PHOTOGRAPHER/EDITOR: JAKE CHAMSEDDINE
PHOTOGRAPHER/EDITOR: ELIAS TALBOT
STYLING: STEPHANIE SCULL
MAKEUP & HAIR: LARKE HASSTEDT
ONSET/STUDIO PHOTOGRAPHER FOR DANI VITALE AND ANNE HATHAWAY: JON TAYLOR
