Embodying the climate crisis and reckoning with the body
In this Response to Sleeper by Korean dance group Jajack Movement, Alycia Pirmohamed interrogates the architectures of the dancers bodies amidst the climate crisis, and of her own body in an Edinburgh studio.
To fall and find a country in the home of your body
Anahit Behrooz responds to Cosmos, a solo performance by Palestinian contortionist and aerial acrobat dancer, Ashtar Muallem. “My body is my country,” she explains, minutes into her Edinburgh Fringe show. “After all, the first place we live is our bodies.”
Finding poetry below the surface
Theophina Gabriel responds to Alexandrina Hemsley’s Fountain, where a trio of dancers explore tidal cycles of repair, loss, joy and intimacy, expressed through movement and digital imagery.
Seasons of nature
Elete N-F
What is best communicated through dance? Perhaps the fragile but sturdy balance between humans and the natural word. Madeline Shann invites us to think as much through her sensorially stunning film The Spring, a visual and sonic unwrapping of spring through dance.
On oil, Drexciya and building pressure
Eilidh Akilade
It is left unsaid: Drexciya. I clasp it in my hands and it is as if I have held it before.
Drexciya rests on the seabed, beneath the ripples and the tides. From ships, the pregnant Africans were thrown overboard, their children then birthed into the sea. The water babies swam down and made their world at the very bottom. Drexciya.
Embracing stillness to conceive the Soft Bwoi
Arusa Qureshi
Beyond the constructs and confines of gender, the divine feminine exists deep within us all. It’s the energy that allows for compassion, nurturing and devotion; an embracing of softness and stillness in all its varying guises. In Danny Bailey’s short film Soft Bwoi, the notion of the divine feminine is beautifully encapsulated through the use of folklore and imagery from Caribbean carnival culture and queerness.
Beneath the Convulsing Skyline
Theophina Gabriel responds to GRIN by Mele Broomes, a digital fruition of performance, sound, visuals and choreography, subverting hyper-sexualised notions of African and Caribbean dance.
The fight for justice requires raising your voice above denial
Kieren-Paul Brown responds to The Elephant in the Room, a powerful mediation on colonialism and racism, written by Alix Harris and produced by Helen Bovey for Beyond Face CIC.
Movement, displacement and the great Black pilgrimage
Theophina Gabriel responds to Black Exodus by Daniel Bailey, a powerful political documentary that captures the seemingly eternal and yet fragmented sense of diasporic yearning.
How do you re-learn a land you once knew?
Hayley Wu (胡禧怡) responds to Spring Steps by Hazel Lam who, through serene episodic dances, tries to establish a relationship with a Hong Kong she no longer recognises after a long time away.
A story of cycles, movement and language
Rho Chung responds to Hypnagogia Glossolalia, a film by Sekai Machache who presents a stunning combination of dance and several spoken word poetry pieces narrated in both Gaelic and Shona.
Rising, falling and unfurling within our queer identities
Theophina Gabriel responds to Bloom, a queer Kenyan pole dancer’s surreal adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream by A.T, and a Fringe of Colour 2020 Commission.
Black women, the body and acts of service
Raman Mundair responds to A Service in Committing to Love Manifestations of Love and Solidarity #2, a dance film by Mele Broomes combining bright luscious colours, music and movement, and a Fringe of Colour 2020 Commission.
Paying homage to the Black queer dancefloor
Elete N-F responds to CLUB, a vibrant exploration of queer black women forging space for themselves against the landscape of London's nightlife, by Esme Allman.