People who enjoy having knee-jerk negative reactions to anything involving Yoko Ono will find a lot to be knee-jerky about in the newly released video for the remix of her song “Catman,” off of the album, Yes I’m A Witch Too. It features a black-leotard-clad catlike young woman leading a group of older women in brightly colored tights through surrealist modern dance choreography while variously hued blocks partially obscure parts of the frame. So, pretty much what most people would have guessed.
The video was directed by actress Rose McGowan (Planet Terror, Charmed), who expressed her excitement to work with the 83-year-old artist-musician, Pitchfork reports. “Yoko Ono has been an ardent supporter of women and modern dance for years and so I wanted to thank her for that,” she said in a statement. “Casting women dancers over 60, including one with cancer, was my way of showing that vitality doesn’t die with age. I used color overlays to create my own visual beat. Very proud to be in Ono world, it’s an important one.”
The song is supposedly a remix, but it appears more so to have been rebuilt from the bottom up by the Swedish indie pop band Miike Snow. The original version—titled “Catman (The Rosies Are Coming)“ from Ono’s 1973 double album, Approximately Infinite Universe—is much more poppy funk than trippy EDM.
Yes I’m A Witch Too, released back in February, features a selection of songs from Ono’s back catalog remixed by such musicians as Death Cab For Cutie, Cibo Matto, Moby, and her son Sean Ono Lennon. It’s a sequel to the similarly themed and titled 2007 album Yes I’m A Witch.