A horn cracks the air against a flash of light, drums pound away, a figure whirls in abandon. The audio-visual spectacle appears to capture the essence of contemporary club culture where to rave is to live. But Graffiti Bodies XV, the latest collaboration between choreographer Dam Van Huynh and vocalist-composer-movement artist Elaine Mitchener, is more of a death disco, a thought-provoking if not utterly disquieting commentary on the long history of police brutality in the black Diaspora.

Music and art frame this syndrome. Using a sampler-beatbox, Mitchener is initially a political DJ. She sings, cuts and mixes Nina Simone‘s ‘Backlash Blues’, Charlie Parker‘s ‘Ornithology’ and Public Enemy‘s ‘Fight The Power’, jazz, soul and hip-hop motifs in the visionary paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat, a guiding spirit tonight.

Part of the dynamic Certain Blacks Athena festival, the hour-long piece performed by Mitchener evokes the countless killings and maimings of African-Americans and black Britons by law enforcement agencies from New York to London to Scotland, to name but a few of the scenes of these crimes, which triggered brilliant artistic responses by the likes of Basquiat. His 1983 work ‘Defacement’, a lament on the NYPD killing of fellow artist Michael Stewart, is heart-rending in this respect because the blows that did for the latter could easily have landed on the head of the former. And the sense of a universal vulnerability of people of colour is the key thread that runs through the taut fabric of the choreography in which Mitchener pushes, pulls, twists, tenses, loosens and finally collapses as if she is being run ragged by invisible puppetmasters who can tear her limb from limb at the drop of a racial slur. As an evocation of those horrific images that were caught on camera – and not – of George Floyd, Joy Gardner and Sheku Bayoh, among others, it is unfiltered and compelling. Van Huynh and Mitchener‘s movement and Michael Picknett‘s soundscapes conjure up stark state-sponsored oppression yet gain another dimension of terror through Mitchener‘s arresting vocal improvisations. Her phrases stutter, splutter, shorten, fizzle and finally extinguish in keeping with the lethal subject matter. Her breathing is halted.

Yet in the midst of this enactment of erasure there is resistance played out in a wide range of metaphors. She is dancing against as well as with death throughout the piece. The skewed steps and jerks of shoulder that evoke lifelessness throw into sharp focus the upward vibrancy, if not ecstasy, of her initial appearance where she whirls and sways to beats she punches from her keyboard, bringing Bird, Run DMC and co into a riotous chorus that forms an anti-abuse soundtrack. She blows a whistle, a potent dramatic agent of alarm, euphoria and carnival, the scene of violent clashes between sus-stamped black youth and the Met in 1970s Britain and ex-slaves and crown colonial authorities in 19th century Trinidad. Making the small piece of metal vibrate between the lips thus becomes a call to arms as much as an invitation to dance but the quotes used in the libretto consolidate the idea of rhythm, musically and physically, as a vital means of self-validation and reconciliation. Sonya Renee Taylor says: “We learn to make peace with our bodies and other people’s bodies.” Mitchener, both in voice and gesture, lends weight to those words on what proves to be a requiem for the departed, an urgently humane pushback against justice delayed and justice denied.

Kevin Le Gendre

Certain Blacks Athena is at various venues in London until April 18th – more info at certainblacks.com

Link to review