This morning, Thelma Plum revealed the artfully created music video for her latest single, Clumsy Love, and unsurprisingly, it's a super lovely depiction of the highs and lows of a romantic relationship, depicted through dance.
Directed by Claudia Sangiorgi Dalimore - whose new documentary with Michelle Grace Hunder about women in the music industry, Her Sound Her Story, is currently in cinemas - the clip was shot in an historic mansion in Melbourne, complete with gold gilded wallpaper, luxe curtains and fancy fireplaces. Thelma herself is singing and dancing through the video, surrounded by a heap of other modern dancers falling about themselves in a pretty impressive way.
And we're sure it wasn't an easy process putting together such a stunning clip. Thankfully, Claudia was kind enough to share some behind-the-scenes facts from the shooting process of Clumsy Love.
The dancers all met the night before
It was really exciting to have Thelma dancing in the clip, we did our final rehearsal for the shoot at my house the night before around the dining table, felt like an old family reunion playing musical chairs in the living room. I hand selected the seven dancers and they had never worked all together before this so we were all meeting each other for the first time.
Clumsiness was key
The starting theme for conceptualisation was the word clumsiness. I am a dancer so naturally I go to the body to try and create a story. The dance related to clumsiness in our own bodies, finding movement to portray the way we operate in relationships with ourselves and our lovers.
The shoot was kept free and fun
I wanted the shoot to be a bit free and fun for everyone performing on the day, we all take ourselves a little too seriously in life and relationships so a lot of the movement vocabulary also came from that incentive.
The creative process overwhelmingly involved women
We had 17 women and only three men on set, that is rare and often unheard of. I was also really conscious of which men I was going to bring into the space to create the right atmosphere. There is a different feel to having that many female creatives on set and working together. I know for Thelma that is a really important element to working environments she wants to be in.
Some of the choreography was done last minute
The solo dance for Sela Vai was totally free-styled and created in the hallway just moments before we shot the scene. So pressed for time, this was me acting out the movement, body slamming, sliding down the walls, lots of falling over and flailing around on the ground while puling funny faces for five minutes so I could quickly show her what I wanted to see.
