Ecole des Sables Variations
Toubab Dialaw, Senegal

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2022

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Performance in collaboration with Ecole des Sables dancers Saky Tchebe Bertrand, Dieyna Salif and Latif Diedhiou, using torches, mirrored glass, sand, mesh, wood, steel and attached contact microphones.




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The film documents a performance resulting from sourcing objects ⏤ mesh, mirror, wood and steel ⏤ in Toubab Dialaw and the neighbouring industrial town, Rufisque. During the first scene of the film, we enter the unique open-air sand stage of Ecole des Sables at nightfall, where it pulses with red and white light and the restless whistle of cicadas. A hand drops and catches a torch momentarily to reveal galvanised steel mesh which frames our view of the scene. Red LEDs map outlines of heads, hands and hair in movement.


We see the bodies of the four performers slowly appear, using wooden batons and controlled gestures to cut lines and shapes in sand and space, and then, more sculpturally, meeting the sand as a site of resistance to hold mirrors, tubes or batons in momentary balance. We hear these batons beat against hollow metal tubes to generate rhythm through attached contact microphones, a tactile sonic language which the performers keep time to. Also operating in the visual space between torchlight and mirror, the performers’ almost ritualistic gestures become evolving, immersive cinematic shadow-drawings on the white canopy overhead. In these ways, we witness a flow between sculpture, image and movement and their sonic trails and vibrations.



Film by Loïc Sanda | Awanje Films

7 mins

EDS Variations 1
Still from Ecole des Sables Variations (2022)
EDS Variations 2
Still from Ecole des Sables Variations (2022)
EDS Variations 3
Still from Ecole des Sables Variations (2022)

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Ecole des Sables Variations (2022)

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EDS Variations 1
Still from Ecole des Sables Variations (2022)
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