To start, there is print material. Four options, laid out on a small table, for Border Bodies, presented by T.F. Cia de Dança, as part of the São Paulo Showcase. Take only two, I decide – nice print but they will be at the bottom of my bag, soon, and it is good to not be wasteful. Take only what we need, and can. In my hand, I hold them close and they slip slip spin slip upon each other. New.

In this Response to Sleeper by Korean dance group Jajack Movement, Alycia Pirmohamed interrogates the architectures of the dancers bodies amidst the climate crisis, and of her own body in an Edinburgh studio.

Anahit Behrooz responds to Cosmos, a solo performance by Palestinian contortionist and aerial acrobat dancer, Ashtar Muallem. “My body is my country,” she explains, minutes into her Edinburgh Fringe show. “After all, the first place we live is our bodies.”

Theophina Gabriel responds to Alexandrina Hemsley’s Fountain, where a trio of dancers explore tidal cycles of repair, loss, joy and intimacy, expressed through movement and digital imagery.

Elete N-F

What is best communicated through dance? Perhaps the fragile but sturdy balance between humans and the natural word. Madeline Shann invites us to think as much through her sensorially stunning film The Spring, a visual and sonic unwrapping of spring through dance.

Eilidh Akilade

It is left unsaid: Drexciya. I clasp it in my hands and it is as if I have held it before.

Drexciya rests on the seabed, beneath the ripples and the tides. From ships, the pregnant Africans were thrown overboard, their children then birthed into the sea. The water babies swam down and made their world at the very bottom. Drexciya.

Arusa Qureshi

Beyond the constructs and confines of gender, the divine feminine exists deep within us all. It’s the energy that allows for compassion, nurturing and devotion; an embracing of softness and stillness in all its varying guises. In Danny Bailey’s short film Soft Bwoi, the notion of the divine feminine is beautifully encapsulated through the use of folklore and imagery from Caribbean carnival culture and queerness.

Theophina Gabriel responds to GRIN by Mele Broomes, a digital fruition of performance, sound, visuals and choreography, subverting hyper-sexualised notions of African and Caribbean dance.

Kieren-Paul Brown responds to The Elephant in the Room, a powerful mediation on colonialism and racism, written by Alix Harris and produced by Helen Bovey for Beyond Face CIC.

Theophina Gabriel responds to Black Exodus by Daniel Bailey, a powerful political documentary that captures the seemingly eternal and yet fragmented sense of diasporic yearning.

Hayley Wu (胡禧怡) responds to Spring Steps by Hazel Lam who, through serene episodic dances, tries to establish a relationship with a Hong Kong she no longer recognises after a long time away.

Rho Chung responds to Hypnagogia Glossolalia, a film by Sekai Machache who presents a stunning combination of dance and several spoken word poetry pieces narrated in both Gaelic and Shona.

Theophina Gabriel responds to Bloom, a queer Kenyan pole dancer’s surreal adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream by A.T, and a Fringe of Colour 2020 Commission.

Raman Mundair responds to A Service in Committing to Love Manifestations of Love and Solidarity #2, a dance film by Mele Broomes combining bright luscious colours, music and movement, and a Fringe of Colour 2020 Commission.

Elete N-F responds to CLUB, a vibrant exploration of queer black women forging space for themselves against the landscape of London's nightlife, by Esme Allman.