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Dancers are accustomed to expressing a lot with their bodies, but they’re not really used to closeups. They’re trained to project into theatres rather than to express the subtleties of emotion on a screen. But there are exceptions, and Patricia Delgado, who stars in the new music video for the National’s slow-simmering ballad “Dark Side of the Gym,” is one of them. (The song is from the group’s album “Sleep Well Beast,” which was just nominated for two Grammys.) The camera can’t get enough of Delgado’s sensitive, slightly wounded eyes, her high cheekbones, her precise but unaffected way of moving.

The music video is really a short dance film, directed by Justin Peck, one of the most interesting young choreographers working in ballet today, and is produced by his frequent collaborator, Ezra Hurwitz. (The two went to ballet school together.) Peck and the band’s guitarist, Bryce Dessner, are also friends. They made a ballet, “The Most Incredible Thing,” in 2016, So it’s all in the family.

The whole video is essentially an extended pas de deux, highly technical but low-key, intimate, and a little sexy. Peck and Delgado (who are a couple in real life) are in a gym, surrounded by nothing but balloons. The party is long over. There is a feeling of being suspended in time, slow-dancing in the dark, hoping the moment will never end. But there’s something downcast about the scene, too. “I’m going to keep you in love with me, for a while,” the National’s front man, Matthew Berninger, sings again and again. This love isn’t meant to last.

“It’s funny,” Peck told me recently. “I’ve choreographed for Patricia before, and obviously, we have a very close relationship, but, before this, we never had any excuse to dance together.” Their chemistry is undeniable. When Peck and Delgado’s lips almost touch, you can feel the longing. The song and the video read like a love letter. At the end, as the music frays and the dancing stops, the camera settles on Delgado’s sorrowful, vulnerable expression. “We decided that Pat could tell the whole story in thirty seconds, just by looking into the camera,” Hurwitz told me. You can’t look away.