One Foot in the Dark is an interdisciplinary performance blending dance, music, and poetry. Split into two acts, the show opens with ‘The skeleton is white’, a solo by Divija Melally, choreographing varying degrees of fight, flight, and freeze responses.
The recurring phrase “white moves first” reminds us of the deeply ingrained privileges surrounding race, still dragged along by the remnants of colonialism. When skin colour becomes a checkbox at a job interview, or when it elicits untoward glances while walking down the street, the tension between a “constantly progressive world” and “bodies stuck in the past” is overwhelming.
Melally’s movements span moments of musings, panic responses, and uncertainty in a minimalist set. No décor, no props, no distractions. The music cuts in and out, and at times speaks louder than any words could when it comes to making sense of one’s identity in a world where labels stick to us like glue.
After a short interval, Melally returns with Saili Katebe in ‘Six degrees from home’. An apt succession from the previous themes, this second movement asks “what is home and who are [we] without these boxes?” As the pair navigate this small space, made to appear so vast through the power of the performance, they lean on each other, drift apart, tightrope their way through the dark, and find serenity once more.
The blending of words, movement and music here is unique. Sequenced at first, each mode of expression bleeds into the other as the piece progresses; the words become the dance. The dance screams and shouts and sings. The music, composed by local artist George Bloomfield, grows into far more than an accompaniment, and the three become organic. Indissociable.
The piece reveals a strong rapport between the co-creators, as they progressively move towards looking in the same direction. The use of recurring motifs in the dance, the poetry, and the music highlights the pair’s individual journeys in this questioning of belonging, and brings them closer together through shared turmoil.
Non-human animals aren’t asked to prove their right to remain. Migratory birds fly miles to pick up and settle somewhere new. People travel continents… only to be asked to prove that they are not a threat. Home can be chosen; it is partly what we make it to be, but sometimes “home doesn’t think [we] tick enough boxes”.
Across time and stars, in a small, dimly lit room, Melally and Katebe pinpoint the absurdities of the politics of belonging, embody how looking for home can be non-linear and defined by the colour of skin you were born with, but also the vulnerability and beauty of sharing such an experience. Of having a hand to hold. Of being able to look into eyes that have witnessed the same things.
They brought everything that they are into this labyrinth. And found home.
By Natasha Jane Kennedy
One Foot in the Dark is currently touring in the UK.
brightonfringe.org.uk
