In Summerville, Georgia, population 4,435, young Caleb Veitch was watching “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” at his aunt’s house when he saw the woman in a patchwork denim jumpsuit, a platinum blond wig and a space-age headpiece bang out “Poker Face” on a translucent piano.
“I was just so amazed,” he remembers. “My little 7-year-old brain was like, ‘What the heck am I watching?’ Like something shifted.”
A hundred miles away in an Atlanta suburb, another little monster was awakening. Like Veitch, Hope Nestlehutt bought Lady Gaga’s “The Fame” CD and would dress up as the ascendant singer, wearing fingerless fishnet gloves and knee-high pink Converse to school. “Whenever I listened to Lady Gaga, I felt like I was a star. It unlocked the inner monster, the inner pop star that wanted to come out.”
Nestlehutt and Veitch met 15 years later as first-year medical students, instantly bonding at a get-to-know-you event where they were asked who they would want to meet from any time in history. “Lady Gaga brought us together as best friends,” Veitch says in a video call from his apartment with Nestlehutt at his side, “and we were best friends ever since.”
That friendship also led them to a magical opportunity.
Mastercard debuted Lady Gaga’s single “Abracadabra” the third from her new album “MAYHEM with a showstopping video in early February. The company then invited fans to connect with their idol by recreating her spine-defying choreography on video for the chance to appear in a special “Abracadabra” (Fan Version) video and a trip to Lady Gaga’s Club MAYHEM dance party to celebrate with Gaga herself. The fan video, which was released Saturday, will become another highlight of “MAYHEM,” which has already surged up the Billboard charts and has been celebrated as Gaga’s latest dance-album masterpiece.
From spot-on takes of Gaga and choreographer Parris Goebel’s moves to performances with more passion than precision, fans obliged — in hotel rooms and dance studios, on mountaintops and in swimming pools, in rain-slicked European squares, suburban American bedrooms and a surprising variety of grocery store aisles.
“We create platforms and build partnerships to create once-in-a-lifetime experiences that people can fully immerse themselves in, that enhance people’s connection to their passion and that turn moments into lasting memories,” says Rustom Dastoor, Mastercard’s executive vice president of Marketing and Communications for the Americas. “The enthusiasm and creativity from fans worldwide, and how this campaign has united people through their passion for music, dance, and their love for Lady Gaga, has been truly inspiring.”
Veitch watched the “Abracadabra” performance last month “just glued to the screen, with my jaw on the floor. She’s almost 20 years into her career and still making art like this.” He started spamming Nestlehutt’s phone immediately, and she quickly found the clip. “I’m texting him, leaving him like 10-minute voice notes of my analysis as it’s happening,” Nestlehutt laughs. “It was just breathtaking — the art, the fashion, the dancing, the music, all of it coming together.”
“We gave each other the willpower and the confidence to do it.”
Caleb Veitch
Even before the pair heard about the contest, they both started trying to learn the choreography, but they say they would never have entered the competition on their own. “We gave each other the willpower and the confidence to do it,” Veitch says.
But before finding the guts, they had to … find the guts. Now second-year med students, they had their gastroenterology and endocrinology final on the Friday before the submission deadline, leaving them only Saturday to rehearse and record. Nestlehutt, who moonlights as a burlesque dancer, raided her closet, pulling out every white, red and black item to match the video’s color scheme: among them, a white ruff and black bustier for herself, a fishnet top and black angel wings for Veitch.
The choreography wasn’t that difficult for Nestlehutt, given her dance experience. For Veitch, his medical training came in handy in an unexpected way. To match the choreography from watching the video, he had to mentally flip the positions — a skill he’d honed from looking at X-rays and CT scans.
“We were in the studio for like five and a half hours, learning and filming,” he says. “Our knees were bruised for a week, but we were so determined to nail it.”
When they got the email that they were among 15 winners, they screamed themselves hoarse, then flew to Los Angeles earlier this month for the dance party and spent two days in rehearsal with Goebel before the final surprise: learning that Gaga herself would be appearing. She opened the extravaganza with a meaningful twist on the opening of the original music video: “The category is: Fans or die. Little monsters, my stage is yours.”
Veitch says he cried then, and struggles not to choke up now. “When those words left her mouth, I couldn’t hold back the tears … Seven-year-old Caleb felt so loved and cradled and nurtured hearing those words come out of her mouth.”
“Not only am I in the presence of someone this great,” Nestlehutt recalls, “but they are passing a torch and giving us a moment in their spotlight, on their stage, and we’re welcomed into it, into the heart of it.”
