REVIEW | LONDON DANCE DUO FUBUNATION PRESENT ‘RUINS’

Cred­it: Amelia Lancaster

“To live is to suf­fer, but to survive…well…that’s to find mean­ing in the suf­fer­ing”. This poignant, poten­tially time­less sen­ti­ment, over­stood and expressed by many through­out human his­tory, pos­sibly exper­i­enced by any per­son, if not any being, who has ever exis­ted, was power­fully inter­preted by DMX for the Hip Hop gen­er­a­tion on the intro to the clas­sic Slip­pin’. The track delves into the tra­gic and tri­umphant details of the legend’s dif­fi­cult jour­ney, encap­su­lat­ing and explor­ing all the pain, frus­tra­tion, loss, loneli­ness, aban­don­ment, rage, viol­ence, self-destruc­tion of being trapped in both the cycle of poverty and the ‘welfare’/ ’cor­rec­tion­al’ sys­tem where this poverty is often at its most intense. Slip­pin’ is DMX and Hip Hop at their greatest; bru­tally hon­est and raw, rip­ping open his wounds for the world to look at and into, to see without cen­sor some truths of the world that put them there.

Ruins, a multi-layered, mul­ti­me­dia col­lab­or­at­ive pro­duc­tion by Lon­don con­tem­por­ary dance duo Fub­u­nation is ven­tur­ing into this ter­rit­ory, offer­ing a fresh rein­ter­pret­a­tion of this ancient obser­va­tion for a new Hip Hop gen­er­a­tion with a slightly dif­fer­ent vis­ion from the one DMX per­son­i­fied at his peak. The piece is at least 2 years in the mak­ing, and uses con­tem­por­ary dance with a strong Hip Hop influ­ence, sound, film, install­a­tion and pho­to­graphy to exam­ine the lives and psyches of its cre­at­ive dir­ect­ors, cho­reo­graph­ers and per­formers Rhys Den­nis and Wad­dah Sin­ada. Ruins is centred around the battle for and between authen­ti­city, accept­ance, respect, self-defence, strength, vul­ner­ab­il­ity and sens­it­iv­ity, with­in and without, in an attempt to scru­tin­ise black­ness and mas­culin­ity in the cre­at­or’s exper­i­ences. It is a power­ful, engross­ing piece of artist­ic expres­sion, that is deal­ing with some cru­cially rel­ev­ant dis­cus­sion points for the world we cur­rently inhab­it and the world we might hope to, espe­cially in the Afric­an dia­spora and cre­at­ive com­munit­ies the artists are situ­ated in.

Per­formed this time at Camden’s Round­house, your first exper­i­ence as a spec­tat­or is an install­a­tion con­sist­ing of cloth draped in the round with first the title, then a film pro­jec­ted from the centre, through the hanging mater­i­al, onto the brick wall of The Hub room. The film, dir­ec­ted by Den­nis and Sin­ada along­side film­makers Don­nie Sun­shine and San­nchia Gaston expertly cap­tures seg­ments of the main dance sequence. The dancer’s bod­ies are wrapped, bal­anced and inter­twined in vast empty room spaces and on bare rooftops with the Lon­don sky­scape in the dis­tance, evok­ing the intern­al and extern­al battle­grounds – the mind and the ends – where the con­flict at the centre of Ruins is played out, privately and pub­lic­ally. The 6 minute film and the way it is dis­played add an extra dimen­sion to the world of Ruins, mean­ing it can be made share­able in this digit­al era (along­side pho­to­graphs taken by Sun­shine and Amelia Lan­caster), but also leaves the view­er intrigued by the ambi­gu­ity, with unanswered ques­tions that are explored in much great­er detail in the main performance.

Cred­it: Aless­andro Castellani

This begins with a darkened stage with what appears as a single body, barely lit at the back of the space. The body slowly moves, and you real­ise gradu­ally that there are two bod­ies, incred­ibly close togeth­er. The first major move­ment sees the rear body place a hand entirely over the face of the one in front. This pose is held for, what for me is an uncom­fort­ably long peri­od of time, and is a very power­ful state­ment. Hav­ing grown-up in the same city as Den­nis and Sin­ada, in a sim­il­ar time and com­munity, to place your hand on anoth­er man’s face – a punch, a slap, a poke, a stroke – is gen­er­ally deemed unac­cept­able; it is a massive state­ment of dis­respect, insult, viol­ence, mockery…or unwanted, uncom­fort­able or con­fus­ing affec­tion. Depend­ing on con­text, it would largely be met with vary­ing degrees of reac­tion and con­sequence, and in the major­ity of cases would be grounds for imme­di­ate con­flict. To begin this piece with such a declar­a­tion of defi­ance to this social norm sets the tone for what is com­ing in a for­mid­able way. The piece explodes, with raw power and del­ic­ate sens­it­iv­ity, into an inter­per­son­al war between two facets of a sin­gu­lar entity, the inner con­flict of a black man/community attempt­ing to resolve all that they must be at once; what they are, what they are told they are, what they aspire to be, what they are forced to be, what they can nev­er be, and all the con­tra­dic­tions, emo­tions, injur­ies, fail­ures and vic­tor­ies that are born from this struggle.

The two dan­cers’ bod­ies are rarely not touch­ing, with their bod­ies inter­woven, bal­anced, lift­ing, push­ing, car­ry­ing, lying in/on/under/above with incred­ible con­trol and a level of intim­acy I per­son­ally have nev­er seen between two black men who are not fight­ing, either on road or in a box­ing ring or MMA cage. And yet it is a fight, an ongo­ing beef between dif­fer­ent sec­tions of the self; the inner-battle raging from child­hood between the want to be happy, to play, to dance, to tell someone you love them, to hold a hand, to hug your child, to cry, to let someone in and the feel­ing that if you did you’d be ‘soft’, and if any­one ever knew or saw that you’d be a vic­tim, and vic­tims don’t sur­vive long where we come from. Because the war is not only with your­self, but also with the oth­er, their gaze and the way black chil­dren and adults are per­ceived in this soci­ety by the police officer, the racist, the teach­er, the col­on­iser, the screw, the employ­er who won’t hire, the par­ent who won’t hug you, the oth­er black man who’s watch­ing you or com­ing at you. Right now. With a shank. So that regard­less of how you feel, or what you want to do with your life, you are forced to be, as Klash­nekoff put it, “ever ready fi bury a guy” wheth­er you want to or not, or risk him bury­ing you.

Cred­it: Amelia Lancaster

This is a real­ity that I have seen played out in myself, broth­ers, cous­ins, fath­ers, uncles and friends through­out my life. The so-called hyper­mas­culin­ity exper­i­enced and con­struc­ted by many of us to dif­fer­ent degrees and in dif­fer­ent mani­fest­a­tions, that is under the micro­scope so hard right now and attacked as tox­ic, which it often can be, that pre­vents us from so much relief, ease and hap­pi­ness, is neces­sary for so many of us to make it to and through adult­hood in one piece, in a soci­ety that so often views us as a threat, a bur­den, a tar­get. This is expressed in incred­ible depth and detail by Den­nis and Sin­ada, as they per­son­i­fy an array of emo­tions and actions, vying for the fore­front of the mind and body – joy­ous, gassed up, fear­ful, broken, defi­ant – bat­tling to both break free of the con­straints of their socially con­struc­ted man­hood and embrace it, even weapon­ise it, to manœuvre through their lives, through their industry, striv­ing to attain some kind of res­ol­u­tion to “the nev­er end­ing gun fight” the late great Prodigy said he was trapped in.

There is also an erot­i­cism at large through­out the piece, mostly loc­ated in the ten­der­ness of touch used to demon­strate the one­ness of the dan­cers, and per­haps also the care they have for them­selves, the indi­vidu­al and/or com­munity who is the prot­ag­on­ist of the piece, and per­haps for each oth­er. This subtly unveils the core of a con­ver­sa­tion that is urgently needed in the Afric­an and Carib­bean com­munit­ies of the Black Atlantic and bey­ond, that wheth­er people want to accept it or not, regard­less of reli­gious, cul­tur­al or oth­er atti­tudes, irre­spect­ive of con­spir­acy the­or­ies (that may be anchored in some truth), Afric­an-ori­gin queer people exist, and they are also going through the con­flict described above, with yet more added dimen­sions to this inner/outer battle we are all facing in some form. Even the ter­min­o­logy used to cat­egor­ise people in this way, along­side the racial­ising and gen­der­ing terms used in this piece are poten­tially prob­lem­at­ic, as none of us would be facing these spe­cif­ic con­flicts were it not for the his­tory of colo­ni­al dom­in­a­tion, which is the ori­gin of these socially con­struc­ted colo­ni­al assemblages and labels, expressed using a lan­guage that is not of our ancest­ors. As someone who has nev­er had to face this par­tic­u­lar battle, I’m not in a pos­i­tion to com­ment on it in-depth, but it is some­thing that Fub­u­nation have cour­ageously and com­mend­ably con­fron­ted in Ruins, which I’m sure will gen­er­ate and con­trib­ute pro­duct­ively to this vital discussion.

Cred­it: Aless­andro Castellani

Ruins is an absorb­ing, inspir­ing suc­cess, evid­ence of how power­ful art can be when the focus is turned inwards and out­wards, deal­ing with lived exper­i­ence, nav­ig­at­ing the dangers of vul­ner­ab­il­ity with sharp crit­ic­al­ity and the skill to mani­fest ambi­tions. Fub­u­nation have cre­ated some­thing amaz­ing, with the help of an incred­ible pro­duc­tion team. Through cho­reo­graphy, cine­ma­to­graphy, pho­to­graphy, light­ing and the unbe­liev­able dron­ing, atmo­spher­ic sound­scape com­posed by James Wilkie and Sam Nun­ez, an eth­er­e­al ‘oth­er-world’ is built to ana­lyse and express the key themes, offer­ing audi­ences the oppor­tun­ity to do so with them. These themes, and the clashes at the core, are of course open to inter­pret­a­tion; dif­fer­ent view­ers may see the piece, them­selves and their own psyche and envir­on­ment reflec­ted in a dif­fer­ent way to how I have, which per­haps is even dif­fer­ently to how the artists inten­ded, but again, I think that is the power of great art, great Hip Hop and of Ruins as a production.

Fubunation’s aim is to tour Ruins through­out 2020, so be sure to look for it, and be ready for fur­ther devel­op­ments, inter­pret­a­tions and pro­duc­tions by this immensely tal­en­ted collective.

For more info, head to

https://www.fubunation.org/ruins

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Apex Zero

An emcee, beat­maker, film­maker and writer from Lon­don with Gren­adian roots, Apex Zero has spent his life learn­ing and liv­ing Hip Hop cul­ture, using it to inspire and affect change. Based in Beijing for a few years and reg­u­larly tour­ing the globe, Apex is well trav­elled, and uses the les­sons this provides to inform his art and out­look. He is a mem­ber of the Glob­al­Fac­tion digit­al pro­duc­tion house and the inter­na­tion­al Hip Hop col­lect­ive End of the Weak.

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