Beneath the Convulsing Skyline
Responding to GRIN by Mele Broomes
GRIN, 2022 (Film still)
A darkly bejewelled skyline. A seemingly quiet city glinting at night. A horizon of golden lights glittering below a bird’s-eye view.
GRIN, directed and choreographed by Mele Broomes begins with an arresting feat of visual surrealism; a sparkling horizon slowly begins to shift. The illusion makes the viewer peer closer, questioning the reality of whether the land itself is stretching. As the glimmering sparkles of would-be street lamps and car lights pulsate and turn, their shaking gives the impression of a many limbed, mythical spirit-creature beginning to wake up the landscape they are made of. Eventually, the many limbs separate into two dazzling figures, who stand above the horizon, god-like, towering and above the still glinting city.
The figures in GRIN begin with their own masked faces in shimmering tassels. Their vibrating movements catch the light and impose subtle flashes of reflections, despite their eyes being cut off from view. Here, a confident god-like demeanour is imposed, one that is confirmed by their towering height, their confident energetic movements and the dazzling effect of their fully-covered bodies. The noises that form the backdrop are digital echoes and wobbling reverberations which generate the feeling of expansive darkness of a vast space-like cosmos which the two dancers move against.
Through luminescent lighting of iridescent purples, greens and deep blues, we are eventually allowed to see past the dazzling exterior as one of the dancers unmasks themselves. The soundtrack takes a turn here, becoming more upbeat, and celeste-infused instrumentation mirrors the twinkling gestures of their hands and fingers as they lock into various shapes. As the dancers synchronise movements, their arms curve and stutter. Their movements display a shared experience, and they take turns working through a variety of complex emotions: pride, marvel at their own existences, shock and fury, sudden pain. Now, unmasked, we are able to witness the full range of both of their facial expressions, which display everything from fascinated disgust to joy and confusion at the movements contained within their own hands.
Every smile contains a low curve at its base and the dancers in GRIN delicately encompass this through their transitions. At one point it is clear that what can lie at the bottom of the grin is a subversive type of rage. In the middle of the film this is depicted through a series of krumping convulsions, which communicate anger and grief that becomes so agitated it debilitates, distilling into the hands which freeze. A perfect example of how rootless anger hardens until it debilitates.
We do not stay in the lowest for long, however. An upbeat transition follows, the music evolving into a samba type beat, filled with rich wailing vocalisations. We are presented with a caring exchange as one of the dancers clasps their hand around the tight fist of the other who has been krumping. As their touches complete, they absorb the violent energy from one another. The person who takes the touch now mirroring the convulsive movements of the former dancer before they froze. In this way each dance partner re-enacts a gesture of care, alleviating the frozen pain of anger when it becomes too heavy to move.
The final corner of the smile sees the figures reclaim their shimmering suits against a black sky, their arms rotating like those of a clock as they shake intermittently in between moments, their shimmering effect misting like haze against a black background. The masking of their smiles are complete as they resume a divine-like distance from the viewer, all traces of their humanity lost beneath the dazzle of their moving bodies, the privacy of their emotions and the eternal feeling of their movements protected under confident sweeps that communicate a secrecy of mutual joy and being.
