Vogue: Leah Hennessey Cites Toyah/The Tempest as Influence
This New York City Playwright’s Music Video Puts a Fantastical Spin on the Tutu
When New York artist Leah Hennessey starts describing some of the influences of her band’s first official video, “Sleeping Beauty,” you can tell straight away that she’s a pop culture fanatic.
She references comic books like Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, old fairy tales like Sleeping Beauty—unsurprising, given the song’s title—and deeper cuts like cult director Derek Jarman’s 1979 film The Tempest.
…The ballet look, on the other hand, was loosely based on Toyah Willcox’s costumes in Jarman’s The Tempest. “I was going for a feral balletic ethereality to evoke the fairy-tale aspect of the song,” she describes. Plus, she never before had an excuse to wear a tutu.
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