Wearing a green ribbon can mean a lot of things, or nothing at all. That’s part of the mystery at the heart of Louise Page’s new music video, where the core message is “I want to see you dance the way you dance in your kitchen,” and the stylish art direction assures us that, in that part of the house, green pairs well with pink.
For many, the green ribbon signifies mental health awareness, and there’s a primal call for sanity in the way Page calls out the kitchen boogie as an integral part of mental hygiene. But maybe that’s reading too much into a song that just wants to make you dance.
To that end, Page musters the full power of her band, complete with violin and horns, to make the most danceable track she can. And the video captures that energy perfectly, tacking back and forth between that kitchen and a sweaty, stomping club scene, where drag queens Moth Moth Moth and Baby Mas, plus dancer Felicity Fox, match the singer’s moves strut for strut, and even producer/engineer Boo Mitchell gets down on the dance floor.
As Page says in her artist’s statement, she was “trying to write a song that was both a dance and a celebration, but also acknowledging how absolutely bat shit insanely difficult it has felt to be a functioning human being in a dysfunctional, often dangerous world. Joy can be a revolution. You can dance for the dead. That’s what this song celebrates to me.”
It’s a perfect way to bring out the power of Page’s crack combo. “Huge shoutout to my band — Annalisabeth Craig, Jawaun Crawford, Gunter Gaupp, and Michael Todd — for playing the hell out of this song and for riding with me. Huge shoutout to my friend Calvin Lauber for mastering the song, and Boo Mitchell for recording, producing, and believing in it!”
Director Laura Jean Hocking also hails the group effort that made such a wild party of a video possible. “I am credited as director on this video,” she says, “but so many people were vital in making these visual worlds come to life — the fabulous art direction team of Sallie Sabbatini/Erica Qualy/Annalisabeth Craig, Robbie Eubanks’ beautiful hair & makeup, Chad Barton’s excellent lighting and color timing, Sarah Fleming’s stellar camerawork — the list goes on. Being able to showcase Moth Moth Moth and Baby Mas was important to me, with the government trying to enact laws to ban drag performances. I wanted them to convey the message, ‘You cannot make our art form a crime. We’re not going away.’ And any time Louise calls me to do a music video, the answer is yes. She’s a great collaborator and a joy to work with.”
