Dear A.PART 2020 artists!

Check out this beautiful work by my friend and colleague Sophie Arstall, that she made in collaboration with the filmmaker Inbar Jeffrey.

The solo is an evolving work that is still in process and the film captures the work at a particular moment. I’m sharing it with you because I feel it’s related to some of your projects on a conceptual level, but also regarding the question of how to translate the sensuous aspect of dancing into the screen, which concerns almost all of you at the moment. I recommend you to endure the full 16 minutes (Yes, it’s long, and therefore it’s also a good example of how we can dare to challenge the 20-seconds-attention-span of our online-audience). .. Just meditate into it!

Sophie says:

This solo exploration around notions of resilience focuses in particular on the hands in relationship to one’s self, as channels or portals into an intimate psychophysical world in which vulnerability, strength, fragility and femininity are addressed and questioned. Exploring these qualities, the hands shape and mould the sculptural clay of the body from the outside in and inside out, creating a pliable, receptive and at times destructive self. A physical language manifests: hands, mouth, periphery, zooming in, slowing, fists, gut, torsion, wind, unwind, rewind, pulling, hanging, rope, toil, anchors, elasticity, these images and gestures carefully crafted as the work unfolds.

The work is perhaps particularly resonant now as our relationship of hands to the self, face, body takes on new consequences as these gestures and behaviours become risky and we mourn a loss of tactility and expression towards ourselves and others.

CREDITS:

Choreography and Performance: Sophie Arstall

Filmmaker: Inbar Jeffery

Music: No copy infringement of music intended.

For Voice: Sarah Davachi

23:17: Olafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm