Live Review: Dianas deliver an off-kilter take on choreographed dance videos with 'Leave Love'

Melbourne three-piece DIANAS have just given the visual treatment to the title track off their 2017 EP, Leave Love. Co-directed by Tom Mannion and guitarist Caity Moloney, the band describes the clip, which was shot over five days in a range of locations, as “a labour of love for all involved” - and it shows.

Working with choreographer Zoe Marsh, the band designed a series of abstract poses that envelop you within the otherworldly atmospherics of the track. Through painstaking editing, the visuals deepen this otherworldliness, the choreography seamlessly flowing pose-by-pose into the next frame as the scenery surrounding the band cuts from one far-flung locale to another. It’s an incredibly disorientating experience, particularly during the bridge when instead of moving in stilted poses, the band fluidly dances around as the camera rapidly cuts in between scenes in time with the track’s escalating breakdown. If you didn’t know any better, and if it weren’t for subtle changes in natural lighting and slight imperfections, you would probably be inclined to think the band was performing in front of a green screen.

But here, Dianas' decision to shoot on 16mm film injects a sense of authenticity into the clip that keeps its disorientation grounded. Saturated natural light floods the symmetrically constructed frames, creating a Wes Anderson-esque aesthetic that perfectly captures the track’s washed-out, dreamy harmonies and fuzzy guitar chords.

A press release from the band says that, of the clip, “the end result is charmingly imperfect; a strange kind of dance video in which the band transport themselves through the Australian landscape like a trio of sporty witches.” Plenty of music videos are charmingly imperfect. But the end result of Dianas’ ‘Leave Love’ is more than that. It’s a refreshingly off-kilter take on your standard choreographed dance music video that ultimately speaks to the ideal purpose of a music video: it augments and enriches the original track with a surreal visual world that expands on the dreamy musicality of the single.

WORDS BY KYLE FENSOM

IMAGE: Tom Mannion

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