Flamencodanza by Flamencodanza Aylin Bayaz and Raul Mannola (Spain) . Choreography and Dance by Aylin Bayaz. Music by Raul Mannola. Book at: https://www.brightonfringe.org/events/flamencodanza/
“An inspired, powerful and elegant piece with Flamenco dance and guitar. Aylin Bayaz’s contemporary flamenco dance combines strength, elegance and beauty. Raul Mannola’s music draws on Flamenco, Brazilian music and jazz, giving depth and colour. Bayaz’s dance and Mannola’s music fuse together to produce an unique show of beauty and inspiration.”
A series of dances are designed to inspire the viewer in celebration. Bayaz gives her movements great grace and allows the music to lift her into a state of being at one with the rhythm.
The filming is simple and static, with no variety of angles or position, so we feel as if we are watching the dancer and musician perform there and then on stage for us.
This is a piece that highlights the art of flamenco without adding any frills or comment, just pure artistry and emotional tour de force.
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Displaced by To Move (Jamaica/UK). Written and Performed by Akeim Toussaint Buck. Directed by Akeim Toussaint Buck and Ashley Karrell. Book at: https://www.brightonfringe.org/events/displaced/
“The cinematic re-imagining of Akeim Toussaint Buck’s one-man dance theatre piece, Windows of Displacement. This energetic dance cinema adaptation translates the acclaimed stage piece into a new medium.
Featuring kinetic dance and a myriad of location switches, Displaced pushes the boundaries of dance storytelling.
This memorable piece uses explosive dance and deep poetic text to tell an untold story from a place of humanity and love, transcending despair and turmoil.
Explores contemporary challenges such as culture, place, race and imperialism. A journey of reflection, calling for global change.”
Dance, voice, and a variety of locations help tell the story of an immigrant coming into Britain and finding that power and equality are not available to all.
From striding out on a beach to sitting hunched up in a playground, we hear one Jamaican experience of coming to the country “my ancestors helped to sustain” to challenge what identity is and may be.
As a piece of movement, this is a beautiful and powerful show in its own right, but hearing about fear, acceptance, poverty through his own voice and those of others.
We sense the pattern of what we – and they – think of as places of safety and survival, and how biases can make those who choose to come here second-class citizens.
Through seperately titled chapters, Displaced takes us through a lived experience of displacement and cultural change.
This is true whether out on a rocky landscape or in the streets of Chapeltown, whether alone or surrounded by others who could tell variations on the same story.
A closing of eyes, a head tilt, a movement of the arm, an arch of the back, all add to the patchwork of ‘going my way’ where ‘nothing can hold us down’, but where intervention and greed complicate pride in self and country/countries.
Displaced is both history lesson and poetic call, and a one-person engagement with the world through dance.
Whether using face and body paint or simply chlling in the park with friends in a bright scarf, Toussaint Buck and his associates have made a powerful and positive film which gives a fresh perspective on the depressing mantra that immigrants automatically equal bad.
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