Dance artists Seke Chimutengwende and Alexandrina Hemsley began working together in 2016 on their multi-stranded project Black Holes. Exploring the potentials and problematics of Afrofuturism shapes their collaboration and the pair chat, dance, write and hold different spaces around embodied, speculative fiction(s). They situate their bodies inside shifting and imagined landscapes, searching for hopeful possibilities amidst the harshness of past and present dystopias. Their Black Holes project includes a new dance work (entitled Black Holes), a workshop series Unfunky UFO and public events We Fly and We Are Made.
Alexandrina believes in dance & the body as a site for expressing felt & embodied politics. She works across disciplines of live art, dance, dance for camera, theatre, mentoring, creative and critical writing. Her practice is shaped by and insists on embodied enquiries into a multiplicity of voices. She is interested in liminal spaces, connectivity, fracturing, displacement and emotionality. She is continually attempting to conjure intersecting, gentle noise amidst oppressive silencing. It is a life long project.
Notable collaborations include Project O with Jamila Johnson-Small (2011 onwards, Sadlers Wells New Wave Associates) and Seke Chimutengwende (2016 onwards) on Black Holes.
She is an Associate Artist at Cambridge Junction. Work has been commissioned by and presented at Sadler’s Wells, Battersea Arts Centre, Southbank Centre, Chisenhale Dance Space and The Yard Theatre, among others. Her critical writing has been published by Sick of The Fringe, an introduction into Selina Thompson’s Salt (Faber & Faber), SPILL Festival and new publication exploring queering the future, Hereafter (Unbound). Upcoming publishing includes The Silver Bandage (Bookworks) and LADA’s Live Art Almanac Vol. 5.
Seke Chimutengwende works in dance as a performer, choreographer and teacher. He has performed for companies such as DV8 Physical Theatre and Lost Dog and has performed and taught improvisation internationally since 2006. He has choreographed four group works for his company Seke Chimutengwende & Friends including The Time Travel Piece for The Place Prize 2012 and King Arthur, which premiered at The Yard Theatre in London, 2015.
Since 2016 Seke has collaborated with Alexandrina Hemsley on duet Black Holes which premiered at The Place in June, 2018. His new solo Plastic Soul premiered at The Yard Theatre in January 2019. Seke has also worked as a movement director for theatre productions at The Yard, Battersea Arts Centre and The Gate Theatre.