Beheld

Music by Nils Frahm, 2013; Reworked by Rutger Zuydervelt, 2015

Choreographed by Alexander Whitley

Stage and Costume Design by Jean-Marc Puissant

Lighting Design by Jackie Shemesh

Costume Supervisor: Sasha Keir

Costume Maker: Sasha Keir

Images © H. Glendinning courtesy of Candoco

Choreographed for a company of dancers with diverse physical abilities, Alexander Whitley was keen to generate a creative process connecting them through performing tasks. We devised working with long pieces of Lycra, creating dynamic elasticity, resistance and counter balance between individuals and groups. Developing this theme into a larger stage picture, the material was then used as an interactive backdrop, exploring its visual and physical qualities.

 

The costume design followed a similar process. A unisex template is reinterpreted and reorganised for each dancer – shifting the perception of bodies by reconfigurating permutations of a black, obliterating panel, a highlighting panel and a red band.

The Stage by Anna Winter

Swathes of metallic material draw attention to the material strength and vulnerability of the bodies that interact with them. A dancer with crutches leaves them downstage to gaze at a silver backcloth studded with lights – when the other dancers’ bodies press through and raise her aloft, it’s an entrancing vision.

There’s a beautiful, intricate section in which a dancer is caught in a cat’s cradle of fabric that’s manipulated by the other performers – she’s wrapped and entrapped but also given the freedom to lunge into daring swoops and balances. Unfurled and billowing, the material becomes a dark rolling sea, expertly controlled by the cast as a dancer in a wheelchair barrels nimbly beneath.