BENJI REID: FIND YOUR EYES (in REVIEW)
Review by Taylor Anderson | Photography Oluwatosin Daniju & Benji Reid
Hip Hop, theatre and live photography intertwine in this exposing piece.
This week, Moves Mag caught Benji Reid’s Find Your Eyes at Sadler’s Wells East in Stratford. When the performance ended and the bows were done, Benji came on stage and asked the audience to delete any sneakily taken photos and videos. He urged us not to reveal too much to future watchers, so as not to take away their joy of surrendering to the unknown. It was a heartfelt plea and if it would have sucked, it might have seemed like a clever way to dodge responsibility right? But it wasn’t. In fact, it was one of the most captivating shows I’ve ever seen. Let’s get into it (although not too much into it).
Find Your Eyes is Benji’s creative journey laid bare on stage for all to see. Hip hop, theatre and live photography intertwine in Benji’s honest, exposing and sincere piece. The core performing trio, Slate Hemedi, Salomé Pressac and Zuzanna Kijanowska, have complete trust in Benji’s photography, which captures in real-time snapshots of their poses and movements. These images are projected onto huge screens, quite literally ‘projecting to the back of the audience’ – a phrase every dancer has heard in their childhood.
As pole artist Zuzanna flies as a ‘kite’, Salomé defies gravity and Slate exudes strength wearing a chrome mask inspired by MF Doom (the late hip hop rapper and producer), Benji’s lens finds their tattoos, their straining muscles, and the looks of real love and kinship between them. But he doesn’t focus solely on emotions of happiness, he also seeks out aggression and hurt, honing in on the experiences of his subjects as they move through the sequences, rather than simply “what they look like”.
As a choreo-photolist, a term Benji coined, he finds a way to bring together all the different artists within himself: choreographer, theatre-maker and photographer, merging them into what feels like a visual poem. He shifts from black and white close ups of the dancers’ limbs and intimate portraits to Afro-futuristic sci-fi scenes in vivid colour. It’s not a traditional dance show; it’s more like a physical theatre feast guided by pre-recorded monologues performed by Benji himself. He openly meditates on everything from his genre of ‘conflict-photography’, to struggles with depression, the futility of perfectionism, being a father, being a son and the tension of being a Black creative operating in a visually white-dominated space.
Abstract and electro beats, hip hop tunes and a broad range of lyrical music–mixed by DJ Andrew Wong–are punctured by Benji’s voice as he directs the performers in real-time, adding to the spontaneity of the art being created before you. There’s a clear sense that the images captured in each performance never make up the same portfolio. Yet another reason why you simply have to see it for yourself.
Benji reveals the creative process is one of both ugliness and beauty. It asks us, as humans, to tap into the most vulnerable parts of ourselves and find an engaging way to express that to a crowd of strangers, and also *shocked gasp* make it profitable enough to keep going. As artists and creatives, we’re bound to this uncomfortable friction. But Benji reminds us that we’re united in this struggle, and that we must continue to find our own messy paths through it.
To find out more about Benji’s piece, click here:https://www.benjireid.com/find-your-eyes
