Loving You

Alison Clancy is one talented lass. A singer, dancer, overall performer, we fell in love with her from previous videos and performances as well as her new one, 'Wasted Love,' a collaboration for the theatrical Street Ballet NINE BY SEVEN.

Honeysuckle caught up with the versatile beauty for a personal vid before a recent show at Williamsburg Music Hall with boyfriend, Chris Lancaster, of their band 'Loving You.'

Learn about her passions, desires and all her different bands!

Honeysuckle Catches up with Alison Clancy of the Brooklyn-based band, 'Loving You' from Honeysuckle Magazine on Vimeo.

On her latest collaboration, 'Wasted Love.'

1. What was the inspiration for the vid?

I wanted to create a video that blended live performance footage of this song with this beautiful video-feedback footage I had never used. The live footage was hyper-real feeling, with exposed stage lights and a visible audience of hundreds of people, whereas the feedback footage was abstract and intimate, created in late-night, one-on-one sessions. I hoped the two textures would contrast in a magical way, evoking my inner and outer worlds colliding.

2. Who developed the concept?

Pretty colors.

All the live footage was from NINE by SEVEN, a theatrical street ballet directed by Danish renegade artist Marco Evaristti. And the distorted feedback footage was created with Brooklyn based video artist Jason Akira Somma. I asked my brother Erinn Clancy to edit them together, as no one knows how my public and private personas collide better than him. I think he was perfectly able to layer the footage in a meaningful way. Erinn also shot the ambient footage of water on mirrors, and sun reflections in a pool which tied it together and influenced the overall hue of the piece.

3. What was your inspiration for the song?

Pretty much right when I met Marco Evaristti, he pulled out a poem he'd written called Wasted Love. A new furniture line Marco had designed was about to launch, and he'd written the poem to express feelings of guilt about profiting from the use of natural resources. He was happy to be making money, but wanted to create a song that was an offering back to the trees. He asked my band Loving You (duo with cellist Chris Lancaster) to collaborate with Danish hip-hop producer Esben "Es" Thornhall to turn his poem into a song dedicated to the forests.

I thought this idea in and of itself captured the essence of the phrase Wasted Love perfectly; he had feelings of love and appreciation for the trees, but had made furniture out of them anyways. And I could relate this idea to personal experiences of Wasted Love; loving something or being loved, but just not enough to protect or preserve the thing, or put personal desires aside. So in the end it is Wasted Love... just empty sentiments. It was a quickfire collaboration, we basically wrote and recorded the song in two days.

4. Who is the other vocalist?

The other vocalist is Danish rapper Niki Bernard. He lives in Copenhagen and released a great debut album last year.

5. How did you meet the collaborators?

Chris Lancaster and I met many years ago when he accompanied my ballet class at NYU. That class sparked an artistic and personal obsession that eventually became our current band Loving You. This song was part of a massive music and dance collaboration experiment that resulted in the theatrical experience NINE by SEVEN that premiered in Copenhagen last year. For NINE by SEVEN, Marco brought Loving You together with producer Esben "Es" Thornhall and rapper Niki Bernard, and featured Brooklyn Flex dancers led by pioneer Jay-Donn. The dancer I am performing with in this video is an incredible spirit named Stevie "Sticks" Harvey. Jason Akira Somma and I we worked together for about a year creating countless hours of video feedback footage. My brother Erinn Clancy and I have been collaborating on videos since the beginning of my career.

6. This is your solo project?

Haha no. This video has sooooo many people's creative contributions embedded in it that I couldn't assign it to one project or band. So i just left the title simple, Wasted Love, with more detailed info in the credits.

7. What is your dance training?

Lots and lots of ballet, and all kinds of other things. If you can name a style of dance, I've likely at least taken a workshop in it, everything from Capoeira to tap, Bharata Natyum to Martha Graham, Brooklyn Flex, yoga. Also I watched a lot of martial arts movies as a kid with my dad and I think that definitely influenced my movement aesthetic. I'm currently obsessed with Jackie Chan's "drunken master" Kung Fu style. I dance professionally with The Metropolitan Opera Ballet and freelance for fashion, fine art and music projects.

8. What do you have up next?

My all-girl punk band HUFF THIS! has some recordings and videos in the works and I'm co-writing an EP with CityGirl. I'll be dancing in Rigoletto at The Metropolitan Opera in the fall.