REVIEW: Kaleidoscopic Arts Platform

Fri 19 Mar
Wilditch Community Centre, Battersea
Kaleidoscopic Arts Platform
Jayne Port - Pibroch Tales
Helen Cox - double pendulum
Lucid Dance - Living With Sin
Feet off the Ground Dance - The Way They Were Then

Independent choreographers Lucia Schweigert and Konstantina Skalionta present the fourth Kaleidoscopic Arts Platform, featuring work from five emerging female artists in an evening of live dance, installation and post-show Q&A. Schweigert and Konstantina's interest in producing dance in unconventional spaces brings us to Wilditch Community Centre in Battersea. Alongside live dance performances, Elisabeth Schilling presents her exhibition STADKÖRPER; a collaborative project between a dancer and various photographers set in Berlin's architectural cityscape.

Opening the live dance, Jayne Port's Pibroch Tales sees the kilt-clad Gordon Douglas Raeburn mime his way through a series of extracts from the Kilberry book of Ceol Mor. As both presenter and performer, Douglas Raeburn acts out mundane scenes of fishing, a domestic disagreement, and an unlikely encounter between two men and a bear.

Helen Cox's double pendulum

Following the squeal of bagpipes, we are met by the sweeping arms and soft pulsing of Helen Cox's double pendulum. With vaguely Cunningham-esque clean lines and shifts of weight, double pendulum is a carefully constructed exploration of relationships. Dancers Helen Cox and Andrew Oliver orbit one another, threading their limbs through the space. The gentle swing and rebound twists the duo like two corkscrews, which then unravel, sending the pair back into orbit. A deeply satisfying work to watch, which could stand alone without explanation or notes.

Lucia Schweigert's dance film Living With Sin is brought to the stage. Challenging the affect Eve's original sin has on the experience of womanhood, dancer Kathy Richardson progresses through three stages of experience, identified by white, red and black costume. Opening in silence, Living With Sin is pensive with an intense feeling of internal struggle. Shedding her red and black costume, Richardson metaphorically sheds her sins, ending in her white slip dress returning to purity.

Lucia Schweigert's Living With Sin

Finally, the night ends with Feet off the Ground Dance's The Way They Were Then. As always, the collective hit the jackpot. Inspired by Mujeres, a collection of short stories, by left-wing Uraguayan writer Eduardo Geleano, illuminating both renowned and unknown women from around the world. The women rotate in centrifugal spins, as the live accompaniment intensifies, throwing them into their trademark fearless, full bodied and gravity defying contact improvisation. Absolutely every decision is executed with purpose and intention.

Feet off the Ground Dance's The Way They Were Then

Kaleidoscopic Arts Platform showcases exciting emerging female dance work. Regardless of whether you have an interest in contemporary dance or not, there is something to be found for everyone- especially if you're seeking art with a political agenda. Schweigert and Konstantina's decision to set these platforms in unconventional locations is just the twist that sets evenings such as these apart.

To find out more about Kaleidoscopic Arts Platforms, please head over to the website now!

Maya Pindar

REVIEW: Rashida Bumbray collaborates with Simone Leigh on Aluminium

Sat 26 Nov
Tate Modern
Simone Leigh & Rashida Bumbray - Aluminium

Closing her series of discussions, performances and workshops focusing on transatlantic Black Diaspora, Simone Leigh collaborates with New York-based choreographer and curator Rashida Bumbray on Aluminium. The immersive performance journeys through the concrete corridors of Tate Modern's the Tanks and Switch House, carrying the pain and desire to connect to African ancestry. 

Rushida Bumbray, Photo Credit: Jamie Philbert

Dressed in a floor length red dress, Bumbray sings African American spirituals, her voice echoing in the corridors. Lay down body, lay down a little a while..., a reminder of African slave burials and the influence of colonialism. The women sway slowly as they climb stairs and slip round corridors. At the top of the stairs, a young flautist and trumpeter join the quiet procession. 

In the twists of a spiral staircase, the audience look on as Bumbray and Leigh glide in their dresses. The tempo picks up, Bumbray taps and hoofs, stamping louder and lifting her skirt to reveal dozens of silver ankle shakers. The independent rhythms of Bumbray's tapping, her singing and the musicians melodies, create the familiar polyrhythm that is central to African forms of dance. 

Rashida Bumbray (left) and Simone Leigh (right) in Aluminium

Aluminium

The sense of pain and weariness is carried heavily in Aluminium. There is no denying that the performance moved much of the audience. Bumbray slips with ease across the boundary between post-slavery performance and the desire to connect with pre-colonial African ancestry. There is a fluidity between past and present, which serves as a stark reminder that the past can repeat itself. 

2016 has been an incredibly bleak year. Marked by a surge in police shootings in the US, the election of a bigoted US president, and a general shift to the right in Western politics. The acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting of teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012, and the countless deaths of African Americans in the years that followed, has informed a great deal of political art in recent years.

Leigh and Bumbray remind us that the historic wounds within African American communities are still open. There is still much healing to be done. But the entrenched systematic racism that is holding strong in US and Western politics is jabbing at these open fleshy wounds.

Maya Pindar


With thanks to Tate Modern for providing press images.