Nineteen years ago, Thom Yorke started to dance a lot. His band, Radiohead, had released the electronic Kid A, and the frontman’s body was freed to move, like a marionette learning to use its own feet. “I suddenly didn’t have a guitar around my neck,” he says simply. “And I was really into dancing when I was a kid.” Publicly? “Purely private.”
As an adult, though, confidence grew and dancing became his on-stage signature, leading to the short film by the director Paul Thomas Anderson, released 10 days ago, in which Yorke is pulled around by a troupe of jerky dancers and glides cheek to cheek with his Italian actress girlfriend, Dajana Roncione. Still, he finds it hard to watch himself.
“Most of the
