Available by way of Vimeo.
Streaming starting October 7, 2022.
Have you ever thought of which tales we inform, whose tales we inform, how we inform them: lately, or ever? The preponderance of the identical type of tales – with the identical themes, on the identical type of individuals, instructed in the identical methods – is a technique by which the established order stays the established order. Kimberly Landle had different concepts, nonetheless.
A survivor of home abuse, she’s known as upon dance to inform tales aligning along with her personal traumatic experiences – work that’s elucidated these tales for a wider viewers in addition to contributed to her personal therapeutic. KIM, a brief documentary directed by Maria Vattimo, illustrates Landle’s story of shifting trauma into progress, connection and creation. The documentary is introduced in partnership with WEAVE Inc., “an organization dedicated to bringing an end to sexual assault, domestic violence and sex trafficking,” in addition to with the ACE Resource Network.
At solely seven minutes lengthy, seven minutes of skillfully sewn collectively narration and dance, it’s an accessible and pleasing (if at instances emotionally difficult to expertise) highlight on this social phenomenon. It’s one thing on the market which is much too frequent, far too underdiscussed, and which such illumination by artwork can push – or at the very least nudge – towards change.
The movie begins with an apropos home violence set off warning. That strikes into the primary look of Landle, the narrator and protagonist, in an iconic picture: her adjusting and placing on pointe footwear. It feels fairly Center Stage, but extra quiet, understated and reflective. She is alone in a considerably Spartan, but welcoming area (manufacturing design by Kimberly Redman). It’s the type of area that dancers typically pine for: quiet and expansive, permitting for impartial work and deep give attention to craft. All else can fall away.
Beginning her narration, “why do I dance?” she asks. She can solely reply to that query with a deep exhale and an “ugh”. Dancers can perceive; it’s not one thing that’s simple to do justice in mere phrases. Yet, Landle finds these phrases, and does so poetically. “It’s a high that you can’t get from anything else…it’s where everything can go and be alright,” she explains. That narration overlays her dancing, in a recent ballet idiom: built-in, receptive, unshakeable. The motion and narration meets seamlessly, supporting one another and avoiding stealing one another’s thunder, so to talk.
The aesthetic (in points similar to colour scheme and digicam filtering, by Director of Photography Aidan Guynes) is darkish, earth-toned – but additionally with hints of sunshine and brighter colour. Those artistic decisions align with how even within the darkness and heavy weight of traumatic experiences, there however nonetheless is hope for resilience and progress.
The music quickly rises to a swell, serving to to construct the depth at hand. Indeed, what she describes subsequent is sort of intense – and really a lot evinces the necessity for that set off warning at first. The concord of circulate – of absorption within the trivialities of a beloved artwork kind – right here shifts into one thing darker and extra unsettling.
Landle describes her expertise with home abuse: acceptable and measured, but additionally absolutely weak and sincere. Reflecting Martha Graham in Lamentation, she dances with a black scarf absolutely protecting her. The sense of confinement is palpable. In different frames, she dances on the ground, paralleling her description of the abuse. It’s difficult to expertise that kinesthetic, spatial reflection of what occurred to her, alongside along with her spoken description of it – but, she’s at the very least there on her personal phrases this time.
She goes on to explain how that trauma made her lose sense of who she is – and, little by little, she needed to regain that. Dance, she famous, was the one place the place she felt really protected. It was the place she may start to regain that sense of who she is. Once she was far sufficient alongside that path to consider others having related experiences, she knew that she wished to leverage dance to inform the tales of people with related tales, she recounts.
That leads us into rehearsal footage, Landle working with different dancers within the creation of latest work: work that would inform these tales brazenly, authentically, and in a manner that may assist survivors. This is the corporate that she based, Klassic Contemporary Ballet (Philadelphia, PA), an organization with that clear, concerted mission at work. Landle describes that work as “using the path that [other] women have gone on, while also inserting my own experiences.” It’s concurrently her story and the story of so many survivors like her.
Hearing the dancers in rehearsal along with her converse solely deepens the sense of versimillitude right here; we’re actually getting an sincere glimpse into the corporate’s artistic course of. It’s additionally refreshing to listen to dancers converse, and be reminded that they do certainly have voices – highly effective and worthy ones, at that. As is true constantly within the quick documentary, the visible and the auditory meet and meld to pleasing impact — cohesive and mutually strengthening of one another.
This shift into rehearsal footage additionally parallels the shift in her taking her personal story to talk to experiences past herself (but associated to her personal). It’s girls transferring in unison with different girls, in addition to lifting them up, actually and figuratively. It’s kinetic illustration of the unity in shared expertise, in addition to mutual assist inside neighborhood – all of that that which Landle has created by this new firm.
The motion is silky, but agency, pliable but unshakeable, foundationed. That matches what it takes to maneuver previous trauma and be taught who you’re once more, as Landle describes: adaptability and openness to new studying and progress, but additionally a agency grounding within the will to maneuver into one thing higher.
Yes, there’s that bigger neighborhood side at hand. In addition, the work of the corporate has seemingly contributed to Landle’s personal therapeutic; “you have to create something to also release something,” she affirms. “What good was all of that if I don’t learn something from it?” That is resilience and the post-traumatic progress of studying in motion. It’s an Exhibit A of constructing one thing of the ache that may have an effect past your self.
The ending display additionally notes that Landle continues to be an advocate for individuals who’ve skilled abuse, in addition to create dance works that illuminate these experiences. That post-traumatic progress, that making a distinction past herself, isn’t a one-and-done. It very a lot goes on. Abuse and trauma thrive in darkness, in silence. Art like KIM, sharing Landle’s story and that of how her firm got here to be, can start to shine that mild and provocate that silence.
That’s a necessary ingredient for breaking poisonous cycles and relieving our communities of the interpersonal ache that’s too typically plagued them. How can all of us be part of that change, you would possibly marvel? Tune in, assist artists telling these tales, be a part of the dialog, and prepare to shake issues up.
By Kathryn Boland of Dance Informa.
