This video is incredibly beautiful. It will challenge your ideas of dance, movement, choreography and video production.
Here is how Eckhardt and the House describe their (his) music, “uptempo and danceable indie music with elements from pop to avant-garde to disco-funk, all twisted up into a signature sound with wild experimentation and disregard for the norm.”
Apparently the video has been incubating for a long time, “I met Olivier,” says Eckhardt, “2 years ago when I made music for a performance at the Dutch Dance Theater(NDT). Olivier danced in that piece and then I talked about my Eckhardt songs … he immediately became a fan and I was a fan of him as a dancer (of all the dancers at NDT – really the best in the world) and then we agreed that we would collaborate for a video one day.”
When the day finally arrived, he continued, “The video was shot in an old (bullet) factory building in Zaandam, The Netherlands. It was freezing when we filmed and we had 1 heated room where the the dancers could retreat in between.”
As for the video concept, they “played around with ‘windows’ and the effects of distortions and shifts of movements through thicknesses of glass. Often we emphasize this by applying small delays in specific ‘windows’ that make certain parts of a body appear earlier or slower – like David Hockney photo collages. Olivier is French and Eve-marie is Canadian. They have both danced at NDT and are now freelance dancers.”
For this single Eckhardt And The House found inspiration in a quote by American poet and novelist Silvia Plath:
“What did my arms do before they held you”, featured in the New York Times under a photo about the 2013 Dhaka garment factory collapse. The photo showed 2 victims that were found from from under the rubble – a girl and a boy that were colleagues. The boy had his arms around her – and that was how death had come over them. A moving picture but romantic in a way, particularly with that quote. The song is not about that photo or the poor working conditions in the factories of Bangladesh, but it was one source of inspiration.”
What Did My Arms is another great example of the distinctive Eckhardt sound: nu-disco where Metronomy meets Prince – with hints of Tame Impala in the bass.
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