In the lengthy and slightly dispiriting evening that resulted, Thomas emerged most nearly triumphant, with To the Ocean Floor, a work full of an evocative sense of loss and surprising twists of movement.
PRESENTATION
Ocean currents regulate global climate and breed a kaleidoscope of life. Humans depend on these teeming waters for comfort and survival. The ocean floor is a place never fully explored, too far from the surface to drift without death.
Set somewhere between human cognition and your own bathroom, a heightened state with the objective to escape.
The unknown is striking; a heavenly force tumbles through the body starved of air slowing sinking to the ocean floor.
The physiological workings of a woman’s mind are manifest in a chorus of movement as she slowly sinks to a parallel reality, a place from which she can never fully return, as she bears witness to the aftermath of her departure.
Premiered at Sadler’s Wells as part of the Young Associates main stage Together not the same programme, July 2019.
POETIC WORK
| Keep holding her hand
Even if to the Abyss she went
Life got her lost
Leave you she must
To the Ocean Floor she goes
But there is no you, except in the dreams you stole
In her Broken body she stays with nowhere to hide,
No Time to hold, no Hope in sight
Just faces & memory, shattered melody
& every time she closes her eyes
The arms of the eternal sleep she wishes to praise
Not sure if the door will remain shut
However certain of the Absolute & the Hurt
You sealed her eyes in the ever-glow of your heart
& yet she became the only thing she hates
With singing in heart a bitter Truth better than the sweetest lies
Yet she is caught between two lights
Begging for the eternity of the tears you hate
Over her lifeless face you will soon forget
Keep holding her hand
No matter where she went, no matter where I go
There is no doubt, no going back, no pain
I leave for the Unknown with your grief as vow
To the Ocean Floor we bow
To the Ocean Floor we glow
To the Ocean Floor I go |
CHOREOGRAPHY
Christopher Thomas
DANCE PERFORMERS
Elin Anderson, Jackson Fisch, Lara Fournier, Monique Jonas, Noémie Larchevêque, Oscar Li, Hannah McGlashon, Ashley Morgan Davies, Rosie Reith & Joshua White
COMPOSER
Jordan Hunt
CREATIVE MIXER & SOUND DESIGNER
Lewis Roberts
DESIGN/COSTUMES
Xinyu Jiang
LIGHTING DESIGN
Ryan Joseph Stafford
FILM & PERFORMANCE EDITING
Ben Williams
PHOTOGRAPHY
Helen Murray
EDITING & COLLAGE
l__artist Lara Fournier