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A Holding Space (a co-choreographed duet which premiered at Sadler's Wells, London)

Benjamin choreographed this duet with Russell Maliphant for the Ethiopian dancers, Junaid Jemal Sendi and Addisu Demissie, who had trained with Benjamin when they were children. It was commissioned by Dance United as part of its Destino programme and premiered at Sadler’s Wells, London (March 2009), followed by a UK tour and performances at the National Theatre in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (May 2009). A documentary about Destino (dir. Coggins, 2010), featuring extended discussion and footage of A Holding Space, its context and process, has been screened extensively. The piece was also performed by different dancers with other works by Maliphant (Strasbourg, 2010). A re-worked version, again performed by Sendi and Demissie (at Plymouth University and The Place, London, 2012), was the subject of an eponymous short documentary (dir. Coggins, 2012). A Holding Space explored the intersubjectivity of the choreographers’ shared practice, building upon other interrogations of joint choreographic processes (e.g. Poole and Ellis, Langsley and Early, Burrows and Fargion). This drew upon the movement vocabularies of Contact Improvisation, martial arts, and the proxemics of deep listening practices. As significantly, however, it researched how to choreograph the shared history of dancers, who (in this case) had together transitioned from street children, through community dance, to professional artists. Although lifts and supports offered an apt metaphor for their lived experience and close relationship, this choreographic material primarily employed a Western dance lexicon. Seeking to identify movement that reflected an embodied sense of Ethiopian cultural experience, improvisation was used in rehearsal to develop an intersubjective corporeality that recognisably belonged to the dancers. The resulting choreography, as noted in reviews, was based on strength, energy and a “rooted connection to the ground” (Dance Insider, 2009), evincing Sendi’s and Demissie’s “uneasy mutual reliance” and a “quiet dignity which is their own” (The Observer, 2009).