KICKING UP A STORM

Making dances for Taylor Swift? Check. And the Met Opera? No sweat

- MARGARET FUHRER

It sounds impossibly daunting. Choreograph a music video that dances through hundreds of years of art, movie and theatre history. Channel everything from pre-Raphaelite paintings to Busby Berkeley musicals to doo-wop girl groups. Make it all look polished, yet effortless. Also? It's for Taylor Swift.

But Mandy Moore was undaunted by the Fate Of Ophelia video, which came out this month. She is the choreographer who set Swift's many varied eras in motion on the Eras Tour, after all. Moore's capable hands were able to weave the diverse dance references of Ophelia into a seamless whole.

It's hard to think of a dance Moore, 49, couldn't choreograph — in any part of the entertainment business.

During her three-decade career, she has created charming routines for movies including La La Land and Silver Linings Playbook and television shows including So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing With The Stars. She has made dance numbers for the Grammys, the Emmys, the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards, among them last year's I'm Just Ken extravaganza.

Recently, she has ventured into musical theatre and opera, choreographing the Broadway-bound Dolly: A True Original Musical and The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier & Clay at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Director Bartlett Sher, who worked with Moore on Dolly and Kavalier & Clay, said in an interview: “Mandy can translate every predicament or joyful moment that we have as human beings into movement. There's almost no problem she can't help solve, and her work will always elevate the thing — any thing.”

Moore's versatility has roots in her early training. Growing up in Colorado, she studied both ballet and breaking, an unusual combination.