Dublin trad act The Bonny Men took over Poolbeg Power Station to shoot the haunting film entitled EARWORM for their new single, Jenny's Welcome to Charlie.
The acclaimed band recently released their third album The Broken Pledge, which has put them at the forefront of Ireland’s resurgence of folk and trad music, and have gone all out with the new clip, which sees dancers interpretating the movements of animals in a dreamlike setting.
According to the band, "the concept behind the project was to tell a story through movement, nightmarish imagery and traditional Irish music in an atypical environment. Work, whether creative or otherwise, can often consume us and our sleep patterns become alive with ideas and unconscious realisations."
Actor and dancer Jade O’Connor plays the creator in this piece and her dance ensemble, featuring Emily Kilkenny Roddy, Dmitry Vinokurov, Olwyn Lyons and Sibéal Davitt, each embodies a different creature; frog, crocodile, bird and scorpion. The creator dances herself into a disturbing sleep paralysis where she no longer has control and the movement takes a life of its own.
The project was filmed in Poolbeg Power Station, which is to be redeveloped in the near future. Director Gavin FitzGerald wanted to find an original space and transform it into a creepy abomination. Director of Photography Darragh McCarthy with the help of Dublin based production company Taller Stories and Art Director James Farrell turned this vision into a reality.
The choreography was created by Sibéal Davitt who took influence from Ari Aster’s recent film Midsommar as well the tribal nature of traditional music. Costume designer Ciana March, who was assisted by Angela Mulhern, created pagan inspired masks for The Bonny Men and makeup artist Nina Ayoub and hair stylist Niamh Glynn completed the crazed look of the dancers.
The Bonny Men are comprised of two sets of siblings, Natalie and Maitiú Ó Casaide, Barry and Conor Lyons along with Turlough Chambers, Moss Landman and Adam Whelan.
The reel played in this video is Séamus Ennis’s version of Jenny’s Welcome to Charlie and it is the opening track on The Broken Pledge. On it they collaborated with well-known musicians - Steve Cooney on Didjeridu, Tim Doyle who wrote the string arrangement and played in the string section along with Martin and Adele Johnston.
