Exclusive: Don't Miss Boston Ballet's Lia Cirio and Paul Craig in This New Music Video
We love it when our favorite dancers are tapped to star in other artists’ projects. When Boston-based violinist and songwriter Josh Knowles started mulling over video ideas for his new single “Same,” the first released song of his upcoming album this fall, he thought that two dancers silhouetted against a backlight could get the song’s vulnerability across. And so he asked two of his favorites, Boston Ballet principals Lia Cirio and Paul Craig, to star in the video and commissioned former company principal Yury Yanowsky to choreograph it.
“Lia, Paul and I are really close, and Yury is a good friend, too,” says Knowles. He first got to know them several years ago, when he performed as part of the onstage string quartet in Boston Ballet’s production of Alexander Ekman’s Cacti. Since then he’s been a regular musician with Cirio Collective, the company Cirio founded with her brother Jeffrey. Knowles has also worked with Yanowsky on several original creations, including co-composing the music for AON , his recent world premiere at Atlanta Ballet.
And the dance connections don’t end there: The video was filmed over four hours at Koltun Ballet Boston‘s studios, and Knowles hired Boston Ballet’s video producer Ernesto Galan to shoot it.
After consulting with Yanowsky about the overarching emotional themes he wanted in the video, Knowles left the “meat” of the project for Yanowsky to interpret. (The song is available for streaming on Spotify and iTunes.) “The beauty of a collaboration like this is being surprised and inspired by somebody else’s take on your work,” he says. The result is a gorgeously haunting pas de deux—but don’t take our word for it. The video premieres today, right here on our site, so be among the first to watch for yourself!
