premiere: Alina Bea - Live Undone

Impressed with this one-take music video for this Los Angeles-based artist’s work. She tells me that this song “is about choosing to take a terrifying leap into the unknown; ripping the metaphorical rug out from under yourself. For me, this brought on feelings of both heart-broken vulnerability and defiant self-empowerment, and I hoped to express this dichotomy through the choreography in the video. The idea of ‘coming undone’ also implies a mental unraveling, but sometimes it is good and necessary to let yourself unravel in order to find out who you really are.

“Shooting Live Undone was the culmination of a life long dream of mine - to call upon my dance background and make a fully choreographed, immersive concept video a la Kate Bush in her prime. It was directed by Matt Sobel, writer and director of the feature film ‘Take Me to the River,’ which premiered to wide critical acclaim at Sundance last year. Matt, Kaiman Walker (the projectionist), and I came up with and somehow managed to pull off our ambitious concept - one continuous take shot with a steadicam and background projections triggered in real time. It was beautifully shot by Thomas Scott Stanton, who has shot videos for Beck and Jenny Lewis. We built screens in the center of the room and Kaiman wrote a program to trigger the projections. I choreographed it myself, hoping to convey the tension expressed in the song; both the loss and the self-actualization brought on by a huge life change.“