Ahead of the March 13, 2026 release of her new album Weimar, Mary Ocher offers a peek into what we’re in for with the video for the single “The Dance.” Stylistically divergent from her previous album’s eclectic, experimental pop flavor, “The Dance” is another kind of avant-garde suggestive of the title of the record. It has the artist singing in pop operatic fashion over orchestral and lingering piano work in a spotlight, black dress with sequins shimmering. It immediately brings to mind the obvious reference to the 1972 film Cabaret set in 1931 Berlin of the Weimar Republic era on the eve of the Nazi takeover of Germany and the air of oppression and menace that cloaks a place that had once been (and would again be) a place known for cosmopolitan culture, intellectual openness and forward thinking art. Ocher identifies that climate today in the world and seems to speak to the anxieties, fears and sadness at the prospect of fascist times again before the world can hopefully cast it aside and heal again and perchance establish something better and more enduring. Ocher’s refined and elegant performance hearkens back to Bohemian Berlin the way maybe someone today would almost yearn for a time of relative normalcy in America when you could at least barely scrape by on a low income and do your thing and live life a little without having to overwork yourself to do it and not worry too much about the government murdering you on the street or actively funding a genocide and threatening to ignite World War III because a dementia-addled lunatic is in the White House. But here we are and Mary Ocher speaks eloquently to a will to not just return to a better time in our collective culture but looking to a time when there can be one again. Watch the video for “The Dance” on YouTube and follow Mary Ocher at the links provided.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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