Christine and the Queens dropped the Hamlet-inspired video for her latest single “Comme si” on Thursday (April 11).
Shot on location in Thailand, the clip finds the French singer flipping the tragic tale of Ophelia on its head by performing a krumping, choreographed dance as her gender-bending alter-ego Chris in the middle of a river surrounded by waterfalls, flowers and dense forest.
Citing Ophelia’s role as the doomed, suicidal lover after Hamlet rejects her, Christine and the Queens wanted to subvert the Shakespearean archetype with a self-empowering twist. “Let’s undo that tragic ending; let’s cheat death, if you will,” she explained in a statement. “Let’s bring Ophelia back from the dead, to express her desire and madness with exhilaration, as something that elevates her instead of pushing her to the shores of death.”
This weekend, Christine and the Queens will take the stage at Coachella, with her Saturday night set being live-streamed on YouTube at 7:45 p.m. PST/10:45 p.m. EST on April 13. Between Coachella weekends, she’ll also be making her debut on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Tuesday (April 16).
Check out the dance-filled video for “Comme si” below.
