Description
Dancing in the Sand
Conceptual photographic research
March 2023 | Variable dimensions
Sand exploded around her like a miniature galaxy, each grain suspended in air captured by fast shutter, golden cloud that transformed her movement into ephemeral sculpture, and he bounded left bare-chested head thrown back to black sky throat offered body arched in this posture of total abandon that only dance allowed, moment where control disappeared and something else took over, something older than thought, deeper than culture, just the body responding to primordial rhythm carved in our cells since first humans danced around fires in African savannas a hundred thousand years ago.
No music visible in image but you heard it anyway, felt the beat that made them move like this, maybe tribal percussion or maybe electronic techno did not matter, what mattered was this pulse that synchronized their bodies that freed them from daily mental gravity, and sand participated in dance, not just passive surface where feet landed but active partner that flew spun whirled, matter become energy, solid become fluid, Newtonian physics surpassed by quantum physics of pure movement.
March twenty twenty-three, sixty years old, twenty and a half years in France, and after so many dark images – crucifixions wars temptations hospitals – this explosion of physical joy arrived as necessary declaration, reminder that despite everything life continued, that bodies still knew how to celebrate, that dance survived all apocalypses, Zorba the Greek who danced on beach after everything collapsed, Mediterranean wisdom that understood that facing cosmic absurdity only sensible answer was to move your hips and clap your hands.
She wore this light white dress that floated revealed concealed revealed in perpetual movement, and her long white or blonde hair exploded too around her head like a comet, and her raised arm threw sand upward offering to pagan gods of dance, Dionysus Shiva Oshun all these divinities that presided over corporeal ecstasy, over this sacred trance where individual self dissolved in collective rhythm, where boundaries between self and other between body and universe became porous, and one briefly accessed this expanded consciousness that mystics sought during years of meditation but dancers found in minutes of intense movement.
Absolute black background created this effect of cosmic void, as if these two dancers evolved in interstellar space, alone with their joy and sand on uninhabited planet, Adam and Eve reinventing dance after end of world, or perhaps before world’s beginning, precosmic dance that preceded creation, Big Bang itself perhaps was just particularly energetic dance of subatomic particles that decided to move together instead of staying still in eternal void.
He jumped barefoot taking off completely from ground moment of levitation where gravity temporarily lost its grip, and this suspension in air captured by photography showed what dance accomplished, it freed us from physical laws that pinned us to ground, gave us invisible wings, transformed us into birds into angels into beings of air and light, and even if we always fell back – implacable gravity that reminded us of our terrestrial condition – we had flown for a fraction of second and that fraction of second justified all existence.
Sand also spoke of passing time, cosmic hourglass where each grain represented an instant of our lives falling inexorably toward death, but in dance the hourglass reversed, grains flew upward defying entropy, and time itself seemed to suspend, eternal instant where past and future disappeared and only this absolute present of moving body existed, and maybe that was true immortality, not survival after death but this intensity of present lived so fully it contained eternity.
March twenty twenty-three and world continued its slow collapse, Ukraine climate inequalities, familiar litany of catastrophes, but in some studio somewhere two dancers had decided to dance anyway, maybe even because of collapse, dance as act of resistance, vital affirmation facing ambient nihilism, and sand they threw around them was maybe ashes of our dying civilization transformed into something beautiful, artistic alchemy that transmuted destruction into creation, despair into ecstasy.
Their magnificent muscular supple bodies testified to years of training discipline hard work, contemporary dance was not just spontaneous letting loose but demanding technique that required as much rigor as classical ballet, and this combination of control and release created this particular beauty, disciplined freedom, organized chaos, civilized wildness, all these paradoxes incarnated in these bodies that knew exactly their limits and constantly surpassed them.
Title Dancing in the Sand obviously evoked expression « line in the sand« , line drawn in sand to indicate boundary not to cross, territorial ultimatum, but here line disappeared in grain explosion, all boundaries abolished by movement, and maybe that was the subtle political message of image, that dance erased the divisions we drew between us, nationalities religions classes races genders all that dissolved when bodies moved together according to same rhythm, corporeal utopia where harmony became possible not through intellectual negotiation but through physical synchronization.
And me sixty years in March twenty twenty-three I looked at these young dancers – probably half my age – and felt this painful desire to move like this, to fly to leap to project sand into golden clouds, but my sixty-year-old body could not do that anymore, stiff joints less supple muscles, inexorable aging that reminded me dance was temporary privilege of youth, and yet image told me spirit of dance survived regardless of body’s age, that even immobile one could dance internally, that rhythm continued to pulse in veins until last heartbeat.
Dancing in the Sand March twenty twenty-three, and sand would fall after this magnificent explosion, return to inert ground, and dancers would stop breathless in sweat, and cosmic black would remain black, but during that fraction of second captured by camera something extraordinary had happened, matter and spirit had fused, gravity and grace had made peace, death and life had danced together, and suspended sand glittered like stars proving that even most humble things – grains of silica worn by erosion – could become cosmic if thrown with enough conviction toward sky, Dancing in the Sand forever March twenty twenty-three forever.
Cornel Barsan
March 2023
