Building on Yewande 103’s current body of work around embodied advocacy, Fountain is a film blending together dance and digital watery environments to explore tidal cycles of repair, loss, joy and intimacy.
Presented as part of Nottdance 2022.
This screening event is priced as “Pay What You Can” with a guided suggestion of £8.
There will be a thirty minute film followed by a short behind the scenes film and Q&A with Alexandrina Hemsley.
Film information
- DIRECTED BY: Alexandrina Hemsley
- YEAR: 2022
- DURATION: 30min plus Q&A
- CERTIFICATE: U (suitable for all)
Please note, due to high contrast, there could be potential light sensitivity triggers in the first five minutes of the film. This film will be captioned.
This powerful work draws on the symbolism and psycho-geography of water as inevitably linked to Black histories, embodiments, experiences and mental health.
Guided by choreographer Alexandrina Hemsley’s tightly woven movement score, dancers Rickay Hewitt-Martin, Rudzani Moleya and Shahada Nantaba, cycle through plural, interconnected, expansive, non-linear states. Contrasting edits of splashing waves with a darkened theatre space, the trio shift between spectrums of being seen, mirrored & camouflaged by water.
Fountain situates itself amidst the colliding range and scale of experiences within Black subjectivities that water evokes: from the play of running through fountains in the summer, to the significance of oceanic passages and the impacts of colonial carving up of water and selves within Black existences.
Considering the water within our own bodies in relation to the other waters within Earth’s hydrosphere, Fountain tenderly senses our inescapable tides of life and death; welcoming how our watery bodies exist simultaneously as oceans, tombs and sanctuaries — ideas around holding simultaneous tombs and sanctuaries arose in conversation with artist Jamila Johnson-Small.
A free zine will also be available at all screenings. The zine features director Alexandrina’s cut of text and images from Fountain and space for the audience’s own reflections.
Credits
- Concept, Creative Direction and Choreography: Alexandrina Hemsley
- Dance Artists: Rickay Hewitt-Martin, Rudzani Moleya, Shahada Nantaba
- Executive Producer: Nancy May Roberts
- Rehearsal Director: Nathália Mello
- Director of Photography: Ngozi Ugochukwu
- Editor: Katarzyna Perlak
- Visual Effects, Editing and Colour Grading: Jack Barraclough
- Costume Design: Abiola Onabule
- Audio Description: Louise Dickson
- Lighting Director: Caterina Castro Frigerio
- Camera 1: Jack Barraclough
- Camera 2: Rhiana Bonterre
- Original Soundtrack: Dave Archer and João Caetano
- Music Production: João Caetano and Dave Archer
- Vocal improvisations: Jalen N’Gonda
The Fountain has been developed as part of LIVE NOW - a new digital commissioning programme from The Lowry.
Supported by Arts Council England, Cambridge Junction, Dark Matter, and Wainsgate Dances.
About the artist
Alexandrina Hemsley
Alexandrina’s creative practice lands in the fluid spaces of dance, choreography, writing, facilitating and advocacy. Their interests are both enduring and in expansive states of flux – or just in connection/relation to the processes within life and within living. They turn towards the sensorial, the bodily, the multiple subjective positions of self – and self in intimate relation to self and other selves – as ways to find breath and voice amidst the unjust and inequitable.
They work with intricate improvisation scores and vivid performance environments which insist on conjuring embodied enquiries into a multiplicity of voices. This includes work within organisations around anti-racism, anti-ableism and embodied advocacy.