Inspirational dance company Yewande103 announced its new production and screendance Fountain, a compelling, first of its kind new work created by contemporary dance visionary, choreographer, educator, writer and activist Alexandrina Hemsley, which will launch and tour across the UK this Autumn.
Fountain is a unique film that builds on Hemsley’s body of work around embodied advocacy and blends dance and digital watery environments to explore tidal cycles of repair, loss, bereavement, joy and intimacy. This powerful work draws on the symbolism and psycho-geography of water as inevitably linked to Black histories, embodiments, experiences and mental health and will tour in partnership with Picturehouse and Kauma Arts.
“Fountain is a glorious film foregrounding the tides of Black experiences, mental health and embodiments. A vital testament to the multiplicities of Blackness in relationship to water and the tidal becomings of our pasts, presents and futures. A must see this Autumn.”
Hannah Azieb Pool, Journalist & Artistic Director Bernie Grant Arts Center
Guided by a tightly woven improvisational movement score created by creator and choreographer Alexandrina Hemsley, dancers ShahadaNantaba, Rickay Hewitt-Marti and Rudzani Moleya cycle through multiple interconnected, expansive, non-linear states. Contrasting digital visual effects of splashing waves conjure immersive watery states that splash, vibrate, drench and flood the screen, contrasting with a darkened theatre space as the trio shift between being seen, mirrored and camouflaged by water.
Fountain explores the undercurrents present in a racialised dancing body, through the spectrum of experiences within Black subjectivities that water evokes, and the significance of oceanic passages and 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 looks at the inescapable tides of life and death, welcoming how our watery bodies exist simultaneously as tides, tombs and sanctuaries.
In 2020, Alexandrina Hemsley founded Yewande 103 to formalise the past 10+ years of work in the contemporary dance field as choreographer, performer, writer, mentor and educator. With the vision to advocate and push for change against systemic racism and ableismin the dance sector, Yewande 103 centres the experiences of Black, disabled artists and audiences to build an ethical and inclusive model of dance production.
Tia-Monique Uzoris a dance scolar and practitioner who writes on issues of identity, popular culture and women within African and African Diasporic Dance for Dance Umbrella and One Dance UK. She wrote this review exclusively for Verge on Fountain;
Beneath the Ocean’s Surface, by Dr Tia-Monique Uzor
The sea is history, the sea is memory, the sea is yet to come. It is a huge vault holding what has gone, what is now and what will forever be. The profound guttural vocals of Jalen N’gonda pull us down beneath CGI-generated waves into the depths of Alexandrina Hemsley’s aqueous realms. We journey down to the bed of the ocean and move through the dimensions of Black experience, mourning, pleasure, pain, and love. In this Afro-futuristic digital and live world, Rudzani Moleya, Shahada Nantaba and Rickay Hewitt-Martin move with a stark and raw sensibility as we jump through spaces imagined and real, spaces of the future and past. The film makes way for the dancers’ individual movement signatures. When they dance alone, I am reminded of how isolating it can be to exist in our world as a Black woman. Their tidal relations to each other, however, bring me back to the care, honour, community, and play present in many of our lives. Fountain is a fertile expanse for provoking dialogue on the vast rhythms of Black lives and the connections around them. It brings attention to the pressure beneath the surface of our waters and the transformative healing available in its eruptive release.
Fountain brought me to the sea’s caverns of mourning which I have been holding in these new and strange times. The mythical costuming of the dancers, for me, reflected our ancestors who have found their rest on the ocean floor. They are free from the terror that tore them from their homelands in the night, but their wails still flood the seas. Their cries carry the undercurrents that wash up on the shores of our own grief. Deep calling to deep they meet us in the depths of our emotions. Their disintegrated bodies have created us an alluvium from which we heal, grow, and create. There is so much honesty in Fountain, that there is a visceral response to the sound, words, and images. As the film reaches its crescendo, an overwhelming sense of release transcends the screen into the pit of my belly. For its offering and provocations, Fountain is a meaningful contribution to Black British dance on screen today.
“I have a deep connection and deep sense of gratitude to be a part of the Fountain production and create a new experience for our audience. It has been incredible and life affirming working and collaborating with the visionary Alexandrina Hemsley and wonderful to contour the other dancers and express all this emotion and then release it. It was powerful and necessary. I hope that together we have created a unique and timely work that can really heighten awareness and appreciation of Black experience and existence.”
Rudzani Moleya, Dancer
