Benji Reid sits centre stage, flanked by two huge screens, his hunched shoulders lit by a single spotlight. Camera in hand, he looks intently at the figures posing in the light in front of him. A bell rings. Act one. He soundlessly presses the shutter. There’s a pause. Then the photograph he has taken appears in sharp focus on the screens. Life and art in a single moment, its transformative power embodied in front of our eyes.
Reid used to be a famous dancer, a leading member of Soul II Soul, and an early pioneer of hip-hop theatre. Then he turned away from performance and with equal success took up photography. John McGrath, director of the Manchester international festival, has coaxed him back to the stage. The result is sensational.
Reid now describes himself as a “choreo-photolist”, someone who combines photography, dance and theatre. It would sound pretentious, except that the results are so original that he really can call himself anything he wants.
Find Your Eyes is a quotation taken from the American photographer Alec Soth. The show, as that title suggests, is about seeing and seeing differently. But it is also about imagining, about finding different ways to frame the world and to cope with its challenges and complexities. On stage, we see Reid photographing three exceptional dancers – Slate Hemedi (AKA Crazy), founder of Alliance Crew; pole dance champion Yvonne Smink; and Salomé Pressac, who works with Studio Wayne McGregor.
We witness their physical ability and how Reid’s vision shapes it. On the soundtrack, carefully honed by dramaturg Keisha Thompson, Reid creates a fractured narrative of his life, his battles with mental health, his sense that black people are engaged in a conflict zone.
Combined with varied, dense, music, it is haunted by images of depression and despair. In front of us, he shows images that match those brutal emotions but also of extraordinary, poised beauty. In one sequence of portraits, Hemedi and Pressac move swiftly through playful joy to resistance, anger and sorrow.
Reid choreographs their moods, offering instructions. Each pose is carefully set; there’s an almost religious atmosphere to the ritual, emphasised by the way that every image is shown as a triptych on Ti Green’s clever set, with the live action in the middle, the photographs on either side. There are so many riches: the difference between the photographer’s eye and your own; the atmosphere of Tupac Martir’s lighting; the quiet precision of the studio assistants whose workings are in full view yet still conjure wonders.
As the show progresses through three acts and 90 minutes, the scenes staged become more elaborate, the dancers wearing fantastical, futuristic costumes to change their shape and form. In one extraordinary sequence, Smink becomes a human kite, holding position with breathtaking aplomb as a wind machine blows silk around her.
Finally, Reid brings on a real deus ex machina as Pressac, a dancer endowed with an uncanny ability to communicate sadness, lies on a light box, racked with pain. We hear the story of his mother, felled by a stroke, tapping out messages to the gods: “Come and save me.” A god appears; she is resurrected. We see the trick. Yet it still has the power of a miracle. That’s the secret of the entire show; Reid has taken his vulnerabilities and transmuted them into art. The metamorphosis is overwhelmingly moving.
Tino Sehgal’s workings are more cerebral but equally interesting. This Entry is the first of a series of commissions co-curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and the Spanish footballer Juan Mata, hero to all who love Manchester United. (I do.) The idea is that artists work with footballers around the theme of a type of creative midfielder known as the trequartista, whose visionary moves transcend time and space.
Sehgal has invited four talented people – a violinist, a cyclist, a dancer-singer and a footballer – to conjure that playfulness in the confines of a gallery. At first they seem to be noodling around; the violinist (Adela Philippi on the day I was there) producing mournful notes as the cyclist (Lea Schaepe) cycles backwards and the footballer (William Cochart) sends the ball into the air, balancing it on his head, neck, upturned ankle.
Gradually, the similarity between their skills becomes more pronounced. As they stand or lie alongside one another, like a living sculpture, you notice the minute adjustment of balance that the cyclist must make to stay upright, or that the footballer needs to make the ball land precisely on the sole of his foot. The violinist lies on the floor, moving only her bow, her other hand plucking the air; it’s a movement later repeated by all of the participants.
At one point they split into pairs to ask the audience about their own artistic engagement. At another, the dancer Sandhya Daemgen fills the gallery with snatches of song. All the time, they gently interact with the viewers, transfixing us, inducing a meditative state.
Like Reid, Sehgal is asking us to look differently, to watch carefully. He makes us understand the tiny calibrations of movement that we are all engaged in all the time as we seek balance and interaction. But he also makes visible the instinct to create art, to participate, to improve. It’s not as exciting as seeing Mata ping a pass into the penalty area, but it’s just as beautiful.
Star ratings (out of five)
Find Your Eyes ★★★★★
This Entry ★★★★
Benji Reid: Find Your Eyes is at Manchester Academy 1 until 16 July
Tino Sehgal: This Entry is at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, until 16 July
