Building on Yewande 103’s current body of work around embodied advocacy, Fountain blends together dance and digital watery environments to explore tidal cycles of repair, loss, 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.
Guided by choreographer Alexandrina Hemsley’s tightly woven movement score, dancers Rickay Hewitt-Martin, Rudzani Moleya and Shahada Nantaba, cycle through 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.
FOUNTAIN has been developed as part of LIVE NOW – a digital commissioning programme from The Lowry Additional commissioning support from Cambridge Junction. R&D support from The Place and a Wainsgate Dances 2021 residency. Supported using public finding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.