LDIF: Maya Taylor’s Shape|Shifter and Yinka Esi Graves’ The Disappearing Act

Online
May 7, 2021

David Mead

Los Angeles and New Orleans-based choreographer Maya Taylor crosses easily between the commercial fashion, film and television, and stage performance. Her new dance film, Shape|Shifter, explores the strain she has often felt to assimilate as a mixed-race woman.

Initially set indoors in a white-painted room, Jeremy Phipps’ trombone (not an instrument you see danced to much) is like a rallying call. Taylor’s arms rise and fall on the instrument’s notes. Her whole body soon joins in. But there’s a sense of increasing uncertainty too.

Also present throughout is ‘modern day wordsmith’, Cubs the Poet, who specialises in custom-written poems on demand. Unfortunately, his spoken text is too often almost inaudible on the film, especially at the beginning. What we can hear clearly connects with Taylor’s innermost thoughts and feelings as she wrestles with her dilemmas, however.

Maya Taylor in Shape | Shifter with trombonist Jeremy Phipps and Cubs the PoetStill from film
Maya Taylor in Shape|Shifter
with trombonist Jeremy Phipps and Cubs the Poet
Still from film

From what we can discern, it’s uncertain whether the text is offering advice or reflecting on the all-too-common polarised nature of society these days. This does often seem to be a world where, as Cubs says, you have to “pick a side” or “choose a colour.” It also questions the nature of her concerns. “Am I afraid of you seeing me beyond what you see me to be.” On a brighter note, “Each breath we breathe is a dream come true.”

As Taylor and her collaborators pause to stare out of a window, you feel a sense of apprehension about where this journey to find a clearer sense of her own identity might lead.

Moving outside into a deserted square, her solo further unravels. Now movement is more, dynamic, agitated. She runs back and forth. There are hints of frustration, anger, even, although it’s not clear if it’s with herself or with others; or both. It ends with apparently nothing resolved.

Yinka Esi Graves in The Disappearing Actwith singer Rosario Heredia and musician Raúl CantizanoStill from film
Yinka Esi Graves in The Disappearing Act
with singer Rosario Heredia and musician Raúl Cantizano
Still from film

Identity, specifically visibility and presence, is also to the fore in Yinka Esi Graves’ work-in-progress, The Disappearing Act. The Seville-based black British flamenco dancer is known for work that pushes against the traditional and widely-held boundaries of the art form, frequently reflecting on her black identity and flamenco’s African roots. Last year, LDIF showed films in which we saw her using improvisation to explore sites once connected with the African-Andalucían population.

This year’s film takes the project a step further and is the result of a short residency with singer Rosario Heredia and musician Raúl Cantizano. The latter produces marvellous music and various grumbles and rumbles, mostly from a guitar laid on a table, not only plucking it but playing percussion on its body with drumsticks, and much more.

Both Taylor’s Shape|Shifter and Graves’ The Disappearing Act have super cohesion. With the musicians there with them, both choreographer-dancers move with the sounds their collaborating artists create rather than too them.

But unlike Taylor, who seems to move with every note, Graves starts by standing stock still to an incessant, rhythmic drumbeat. Even in the upstage distance, the eyes are immediately drawn to her figure in white. Part of Graves’ thinking is that the body has knowledge that we are not always aware of. Slowly, she arches back. Then, as if her body is slowly awakening, realisation dawning, she starts to pulse gently but with power to the sound.

Yinka Esi Graves (left) in her work-in-progrss, The Disappearing ActStill from film
Yinka Esi Graves (left) in her work-in-progrss, The Disappearing Act</>
Still from film

Voices heard in the soundscape overlay one another. It’s like a crowd. Few words are clear, although amongst those that are, is the phrase “chances of survival,” heard several times, and “always smile.” And indeed, among the many aspects to the project, Graves talks about the power of disguise as an act of survival and how women of African descent use shapeshifting and camouflage to exist in hostile environments, also questioning how insidious these can become.

A section featuring zapateado, palmas and vocals from Heredia, alerts us to what has been called flamenco’s ‘hidden blackness’, southern Spain having had a significant free and slave African population as early as the 15th-century. As Graves previously explained, that history has been forgotten in large part; by everyone. While it’s original form is still recognisable, the flamenco soon shifts however as if other forces (hidden memories perhaps) are influencing it.

She then tells us to “be attentive”. Not that it’s needed. Her drawing of a map on the floor with chalk is unexpectedly compelling, matters helped by the switch to an overhead camera. It’s clearly very personal, and although has no obviously recognisable form, several large circles are prominent. When Graves dances around her creation, she sometimes hops from place to place, sometimes shifts on heel and toe. It feels like she is tracing, or perhaps rediscovering a pathway, a history, with all the uncertainty that brings. I look forward to see where her journey takes her.