The Dust of My Concrete Child

«The fundamental affinity between dance and film is that they are based on movement» (David Hinton, 2008) but also the spaces and places where the “cine-choreographic” unfolds (Erin Brannigan, Dancefilm: Choreography and the Moving Image, 2011). The environment is an arresting feature of the multi-portraited work The Dust of My Concrete Child that is co-inhabited by seven performers with extreme bodily commitment. Each “portrait” corporeally impresses bodies moving among the detritus and interiors of an empty warehouse. They create an “active image in motion” (Georges Didi-Huberman), re-impressed on these same walls in situ where a live audience can watch and listen from scattered couches on headphones. The project is developed with care, yet no idea appears to have been too challenging. We need risk and adventure against a backdrop of restrictive safety regulations and growing conservatism toward how we make art. Choreographer/director Lino Eckenstein and collaborators, supported by Tanzhaus Basel, deliver just that.

Each portrait – there are seven like the sins – fold in and out of the interior spaces of the Franck Areal in Basel. The camera reveals figures in contorted shapes on inhospitable surfaces; some wrapped in garbage bags, others tied together by rubber rings or concealed beneath stretched stockings – breathless. There is an instant feeling of suffocation, always on the precipice of being with or without air. This forms a baseline for the portraits, offering a counterpoint to the freer, more expansive sequences where space is scooped up in the lyrical power of a sweeping leg or arm. The constant running between levels, stairwells, passageways and rooms within rooms, and the slamming duets where bodies are hooked and hung from a stable base, point to a dialectic between violence and safety that echoes many relationships.

Bodies quiver, shudder then explode. Sometimes these are independent journeys, scored with stillness or a pedestrian task, like unzipping a costume. When they are together in a larger room, I sense the influence of Meg Stuart in the movement vocabulary. Frenetic gestures build intensity from the small. Different qualities affect independent limbs and spread simultaneously across the body, connecting each to the other in contagion. The camera hovers like the Holy Spirit above, observing them fight the forces of some inner demon.

The movements seem idiosyncratic to the dancer, rather than an imposed style or set of sequences. Each movement is shaped and tasked to give us a feeling or strong image framed by a window, costume or “poured on top” material. In one portrait, a dancer in foetal position is buried by concrete rubble. In another, a dancer sits with concrete blocks on her leg, while a further variation on concrete, and the most poetic image of all, is a figure sitting at a desk perfectly covered in a thick dust. From heaviness to feather like lightness, this substance on the figure traverses the many stages of existential weight we might feel.

Portrait Six, “Risk and Balance” is the most impressive. Not because of the gelatinous “goo” that envelops the dancers like new-born calves, rather, it is the simple strategy of task-based direction “to stand” that communicates their vulnerability and an inherent strength to overcome any psycho-physical obstacle. This is different to the “inequitable” strength that these trained virtuosic bodies stage perform throughout. Suddenly, there is a realness to the struggle. Rubén Darío Bañol (cinematographer) was able to get in close and linger on the delicate tension between stability and fragility. New-borns slapping hard to the floor like baby quadrupeds trying to walk.  

I particularly liked the contradictory sound score by Robin Becker, of glass shattering, rather than a slippery thud each time the dancer fell. It provided an animated layer that drew me back to the theme. Other times, repetitive found sounds (siren, cow bell) and bio-sounds (breathing) punctuate a nervy, electronic crackle. In another portrait, it sounds as though a radio is playing in a distant backroom, warming the brutal atmosphere with it dulcet tune, but then sardonically twisted by the metallic score, returning us to the edge.

The camera in “dancefilm” often takes on the role of another dancer, moving closely with the mover (Katrina McPherson). There is no homogeneity in approach to how the camera moves in this piece. While sometimes it looks understandably like “play” in such a rich industrial environment, the intention is clear. We are moved in and out of states, rolled close, given a birds-eye view, then thrown into the thickness of the goo. Various techniques offer rich palettes used to explore the atmospheres, natural light, colouring and abundance of textures. I had a strong Nykvist-Bergman moment with the surveillance video cam recorder providing a grainy image of a gesticulating figure in period couture frantically blessing themself in a corridor like space. The black on white with speckled grey was satisfyingly shot from a high angle.

Similarly, the editing (Rubén Darío Bañol) was given a tough brief of projecting seven looping channels, played simultaneously and viewed on demand by a roving audience in the space of its genesis, a cathedral space that rivals attention. The individual portraits possess an engaging temporality and seamless relation with the sound; each act alone, not necessary parts of the whole.

I admittedly struggled to see the connection between these incredibly strong, well-trained dancers moving so confidently in their idiom and the theme – at least at first. I could not shake the problematic of representation of dark traumatic ideas in bodies so beautiful and unbroken. However, when writing, I give words to the images and poetically “activate their motion” as Jacques Ranciére would say of Didi-Huberman. The sensations they trigger in me on reflection, allows me to see an authentic process of collaboration connecting with the themes that originated in the sub-conscious of Eckenstein. This sits better, since the piece itself does not need to extrapolate toward any greater message about “violence and intimacy” in the lived experiences of a particular group or as a shared phenomenon. The work generates an intricate and daring intimacy within the nooks and crannies of the building and between the artists so fully committed to the process. It is an impressive undertaking, full of ideas successfully realised. I look forward to seeing what’s next on the horizon for CRUELBEHAVIOR Projects.