Choreography Fellow 2019-2020: Sebulime Elisha Davis

IMG_1605Davis is someone who searches for what makes us unbearably human through dance. He believes that dance is a medium for expression, communication, and recovering one’s identity. His work focuses on his project in Kampala, Uganda called Soul Xpressions, through which he works with young children to explore themes of self-worth, self-identity, and courage to be themselves. His dancers have performed at the Brave Kids Festival, Dance Transmission, Laba Arts Festival, Batalo Dance Fest, and East African Night of Tolerance. Some of his incredible performance work can be viewed here and here. He has also worked as a dancer instructor at the British School of Kampala and Harvest Academy to name a few places.

What is the relationship between dance and medicine?

Health is bringing balance in what we experience in life!  Balance in the elements that IMG_1606give life rhythm, energy and course. Through movement we get in touch with all the five elements and can trace our way back to light and truth, which is the original medicine or mind. Dance/movement as a healing salve accompanied with percussion, can facilitate the recovery of lost parts of a soul, which is fundamental to our physical health.

Choreography Fellowship Project: On Earth and Humans  called “Me Too”

Health is a balanced state of being and healing is the process of creating or restoring that state. Thus, healing is bringing balance to life experiences, to our mental, physical and emotional aspects and bringing awareness to the elements that give life rhythm, energy and a direction or purpose.

Through movement /dance, singing, story telling and silence we experience total impact of the elements (void, air, water, fire and earth) and come face to face with truth, light and the shadows of our authentic selves. We access a window or medium to reconnect to the pristine mind, the original medicine.

Dance/movement as a healing salve accompanied with sound, can facilitate the recovery of lost parts of a soul, and help the body detox which is fundamental to our physical, mental and spiritual health.

Choreography: 

Duration: 6:00 minutes

Dancers: (4) Twinomujuni Ivan, Natabi Sara, Apio Sharon, Kanyinke Edgar

Music: Percussion by Sadam Sseguya and Bensound-relaxing

Dance genres: African Contemporary, Modern dance

Choreographed by Sebulime Elisha Davis

Synopsis

In pursuit of a perfect World, we have lost sight of the beauty that makes us glow, fallen short in means that make life a gift to savor not a struggle to survive. This dance choreography ponders on the idea of realization of a disconnection to natural forces that restore our vitality and heals our deficiencies. Finding way back to a place of wholeness inside and out, connecting with nature using nature’s old healing salves, movement, sound and story telling/spoken word.

 Spoken word: 

We spend all our lives

Nourishing the flesh

And ignore the truth that flesh is soil,

Earth that never dies.

See, these times when the fame

Of a young man is his success in the game.

Coated with these actions that seem to constantly alter

Claiming life forms every now and then.

If it is our own tongues, actions that betray us

Then we have become the most familiar strangers

To this land. Our home! A place we were born

If to be born is to ignite death,

To live is to give chance to possibilities

And to give is to love

Then where is the Love?

It is more than a name. More than a place

More than memories past.

It is our Mother, the Earth.