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DANCE UMBRELLA FESTIVAL: ANOTHER ATTEMPT TOWARDS HOME



Change Tempo: several attempts at braiding my way home
Credit Amina Seid Tahir

When you are submerged in water, what do you feel? Terror, calm, fear, or peace. Birth, relaxation, slavery, or death. If oceans are interconnected, separated by thin imaginary lines created by power, what can we learn from the blue mass that covers 75% of our world and is ultimately only one unified body?

 

This is their attempt.

 

Adam Seid Tahir (they/them) and Amina Seid Tahir (she/her) carry us on a journey through oceans in their London debut of several attempts at braiding my way home. Their show will be introduced as part of Dance Umbrella's Change Tempo programme bringing together international artists that blur the line between dance and visual art. The Afro-Nordic duo of Eritrean descent were born in Sweden, where they crafted this part-art piece, part-cultural archive. They found their piece on the teachings of Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals and their own experiences growing up in a family that prioritised community beyond family lines. It will force us to confront our own notion of community, Blackness, queerness, hair, and how people of colour are intertwined across bodies of water.


Change Tempo: several attempts at braiding my way home
Credit Benedicte Ramfjord

Whilst building this performance, Adam and Amina were faced with the deepness alongside the vulnerability that comes with working with someone who knows you the best, a lifelong friend, or in this case, a sibling.  Amina usually approaches work audio-visually and conceptually whilst Adam begins in a more embodied and intuitive sense. These distinct stylistic and technical approaches were quickly overcome by the sibling’s closeness and friendship, stitching together a show that reflects their and our own need, desire, and requirement for community. An expression of how ancestry can mean much more than humanity, with Adam recalling that “ancestry [can be of] affinity, not just biology.”

 

Diving into the underbelly and makeup of the show also reveals its complexity, with its mix of mediums. Sound (produced by Crystallmess) shifts, ebbing your energy along from calm and meditative to more high power, backed by heavy bass. Lighting is focused on one source (their very own “sun”) that follows Adam’s body and swimming movements throughout his ritualistic hair practice. Colour vacillates between purple, red, blue, green, changing your perception and feelings towards what’s unfolding.


Change Tempo: several attempts at braiding my way home
Credit Vladimir Kamensky

Texture is embodied in the long, expansive weave, the sole back drop, that Amina explains as “not just extensions of hair, but an extension of body, of skeleton, like fins, giving the ability to shapeshift,” akin to the oceanic mammals that inspired them from the start. Facial expression is paired with dance to wrap up all of these energetic transformations and changes that exist together in front of the audience. You will see the “stank face” referenced multiple times as the performance plays out alongside multiple dance scores.

 

Though a show with little to no words, text literally binds everything together, from the book that inspired them to the dance score called the Bone Fusion, born from a semi long text about the idea of being able to transform one’s skeletal structure (like dolphins shaped their fins from appendages when moving from land to water).

 

How can one be ready for what can partially be described as a sound bath of community and also an art piece of cultural history? Adam and Amina say to “prepare yourself for joy, sadness, and lack of understanding.” POC may be triggered in some instances and soothed in others. While non-POC may be confused or left with more questions. All reactions and feelings which are not only okay, but understandable when the audience is in many ways also part of this sacred performance. They welcome everyone, but non-POC must be mindful that they are guests in the space and are invited to watch, learn, and listen.

 

Adam and Amina steep their piece in all of their connotations of home for us to grasp on to. For the former, “home [is] a verb, an action, a practice, it is constantly changing.” The latter – “home is a deliberate choice, it is about deciding.” This act of creation is embedded while you watch Adam unbraid their own hair and integrate it directly into the set’s background of woven extensions. With every show, they add more and more to this foundation, recalling walruses who use their whiskers (their hair) to sense the ocean, a piece of themselves that is even more sensitive than their own eyes. Is London the attempt that finally brings them home? Brings us? The answer doesn’t matter because the definition will always change. The only importance – with whom you search.

 

Join La Fomo for a collective viewing of several attempts at braiding my way home on 25 October at Brixton House where you can define, question, and invest in our own definitions of home with Adam and Amina Seid Tahir. Book your tickets here.





Venue: 

Brixton House


Date: 

Thurday 24 October 19:30 + Post-show talk

Friday 25 October 19:30 + Post-show DJ set

Admission: 

Tickets £12, £16


Duration: 

Approx. 45 minutes (no interval)



This article was written in partnership with Dance Umbrella. We only collaborate with organisations that align with our values, and you can trust that we only feature events we believe are relevant to our community.



Words by Mary Wurie

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