Ecole des Sables Variations

A film of the first phase of a collaboration with dancers Saky Tchebe Bertrand, Dieyna Salif and Latif Diedhiou. This film documents the performance resulting from Nichols' collaboration with these three dancers during her residency at Ecole des Sables, Toubab Dialaw, Senegal.

The film documents a performance resulting from sourcing objects ⏤ mesh, mirror, wood and steel ⏤ in Toubab Dialaw and the neighbouring industrial town, Rufisque. During the first scene of the film, we enter the unique open-air sand stage of Ecole des Sables at nightfall, where it pulses with red and white light and the restless whistle of cicadas. A hand drops and catches a torch momentarily to reveal galvanised steel mesh which frames our view of the scene. Red LEDs map outlines of heads, hands and hair in movement.

We see the bodies of the four performers slowly appear, using wooden batons and controlled gestures to cut lines and shapes in sand and space, and then, more sculpturally, meeting the sand as a site of resistance to hold mirrors, tubes or batons in momentary balance. We hear these batons beat against hollow metal tubes to generate rhythm through attached contact microphones, a tactile sonic language which the performers keep time to. Also operating in the visual space between torchlight and mirror, the performers’ almost ritualistic gestures become evolving, immersive cinematic shadow-drawings on the white canopy overhead. In these ways, we witness a flow between sculpture, image and movement and their sonic trails and vibrations.

• https://vimeo.com/804888096
• https://www.clairenichols.info/