Preview: And Not A Word Was Spoken – dance film exploring relationships in the pandemic, premiering at NAF 2022

Preview: And Not A Word Was Spoken – Jacques Batista’s dance film exploring relationships in the pandemic, people and the spaces they cohabit, premiering at 2022 National Arts Festival on NAF Online

At the 2021 National Arts Festival [NAF] in Makhanda, Jacques Batista and his team won a much deserved Standard Bank Ovation Award for the poignant dance film, As If the Rain Watched Over Her. Batista’s new dance film, And Not A Word Was Spoken, premieres at NAF 2022 on NAF Online [virtual platform]. The film is available for viewing between June 23 and July 3, 2022. Info as supplied:

Jacques Batista announces: And Not A Word Was Spoken, a new dance/film to be released on the national arts festival’s NAF online – from June 23 to July 3 2022

Jacques Batista is pleased to announce And Not A Word Was Spoken. Conceptualised, directed, filmed and written by the versatile theatre and filmmaker, Jacques Batista, this new dance/film, based on an original story, features movement practitioners Leilah Kirsten and Richard-Dean Sumares with an original score by Kendal Beadon.

A Dramatic Arts educator and graduate of the Rhodes Drama Department, Batista I enrolled at his alma mater doing an MA with a focus on screen dance. Following his collaboration on the short film, As If The Rain Watched Over Her, which won a Standard Bank Ovation Award at the 2021 National Arts Festival in Makhanda, Batista is returning to the National Arts Festival on its online programme. NAF Online. Having conceptualised and choreographed As If The Rain Watched Over Her, he was inspired to create a new work exploring research topics with established movement practitioners, Leilah Kirsten and Richard-Dean Sumares in the dance/film, And Not A Word Was Spoken.

Exploring relationships in the pandemic – people and the spaces they cohabit

Challenging notions of dance and acting, And Not A Word Was Spoken, explores the nature of relationships in light of the pandemic and what might happen subsequently to people and the spaces they cohabit. Working with technology on hand and domestic spaces available to them, Batista, with the two performers, have created a narrative told exclusively through and by the body in the French New Wave style of filming that combines a variety of camera work to capture the story. And Not A Word Was Spoken tells the story of two characters who undergo a transformation when the space between them becomes difficult to navigate. Do they recover, mend and heal the scar tissue between them in the confined space they share when the closeness of the other becomes too much? In a post-pandemic world, how do we (re)claim the spaces we share(d) with the ones we hold close? As they seek out emotional rescue, do they find their world the same place or has it shifted? Set to an original score by Gqeberha based composer/musician, Kendal Beadon, the world of the characters, infused with acoustic guitar, is sonically dissonant and ambient.

Creative collaboration

Batista first met Kirsten and Sumares in 2019 at the Movement Immersion which the latter two co-presented. Having followed their practice, Batista saw them as ideal performer/collaborators with whom he could develop the choreography. Filmed in domestic space in Cape Town, the process utilised Zoom as digital studio with Batista working from Gqeberha with the two performers in the Mother City. The choreographic language which Batista developed with Kirsten and Sumares blends everyday activities with an emotional landscape that manifests through the movement sequences in confined and open spaces.

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