Release of CHILDSTAR Final Act video
On the eve of the release of her new album, Grace relased her CHILDSTAR Final Act album video online, preceeded by a “curtain call” introduction. The video contains five of the nine songs on the record.
The video is a single performance consisting of five parts – seamlessly blending into each other: Porud, Brand New, Homesick, Behavioral Problems, and Fade, each represented by a row of pictures in the collage.
From Graces, introductory live chat:
Grace talked about the importance of colours: "Storytelling with colours is important. For ‘Brand New’, for example, the first thing that came to mind was pure red – being all white and then slowly getting stained.". "Homesick", she said "represents an uncomfortable, raw moment" , and she talked about "Fade", the last song on the album "I fell into to tears when we first started rehearsing this. … It is such a great last song for this album, it’s kind of a fuck you to any barriers and constraints that were filtering your story – it’s the album of the album – I am going to celebrate my pain because that’s what feels good to me. … There is so much beauty in honest pain. ....There are religious symbols in some of the videos, but they are not religious commentary. I have been inspired by purity culture and my personal experience with that belief. But I am not speaking on any religion at all.
At lot of the dances came from exercises. For the interlude before Fade, Lucca told me to stand there and be limp and asked everyone to start moving me, frozen in that place."
Production
The video was directed by Grace, her choreographer Luca Renzi and Jacob Boehme. Washington Square News, UNY’s Student newspaper calls Grace’s Swiss-born co-choreographer, Luca Renzi Smith: "Queer Dance Jesus", and "a man who speaks, live and breathe style". Jacob Boehme is (we believe) an Australian theatremaker and choreographer.
Director of photography was Michael Morones
Choreography by Luca Renzi and Grace.
The dancers were: Isabella Caso, Shelby Davis, Téa Devereaux and Jane Zogbi.
The score was by Eren Cannata
The video was produced by Kevin Broadway and his partner Anna Gurvits. In his IMDB profile (written by himself) Kevin presented himself as "a Los Angeles-based entertainment professional specialising in marketing, production, and film distribution”. Anna Gurvits works with partnership marketing, Acquisition and strategy and has done work for, among others, Hilton and Microsoft".
The Venue
The video was filmed at The Alex Theatre in Glendale, California. The theatre, seating 1400, was Walt Disney's favourite place to preview his cartoons to see how they would play to audiences. Miles Williams, the artistic director for the theatre describes the theatre as: "A place where independent artists outside of the mainstream are treated with equal value and given equal access to our stage. Shows that are overlooked by the corporate promoters but cherished by the many diverse audiences of greater Los Angeles."