Analysing a piece of choreography from Tom Richardson

"Mental health" By Tom Richardson

Tom Richardson    

I will be analysing a 2 minute piece, choreographed by Tom Richardson called “mental health”. The dancer in the video is Włodek Kołobycz.

Richardson uses a quote by Glenn Close "What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, more unashamed conversation" in the description of the video. The message they are trying to portray is that when mental health is ignored it is even more of a struggle to open up about what you are going through whereas, when you add the sunlight it exposes the mental health and therefore society will see what people are having to go through. There is a moment in the piece (1.20 minutes) where the shadows multiply to create the idea of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is when a person may not always be able to distinguish their thoughts and ideas from reality. (Schizophrenia, 2020) The dancer then looks down at one of the shadows with a fearful expression which reinforces the idea of hallucinations.  

The dance is very elegant and light however, there are a lot of dynamics that then flow into another soft movement. Richardson has choreographed it so that there is a lot of arm movement. The arms mostly lead the dancer's body either into curves or jumps. I would say that they have cleverly used lighting because when the lighting is brighter the dancer has a free expression on his face. I like the way they have incorporated Glenn Close’s quote because although the brightness of the lighting changes, the shadows never leave. I think this shows how complex mental health is because no matter how much treatment you get there will always be mental health because of modern-day society.

As an audience member, I felt included in the dance because the dancer was so expressive which helped me understand the internal pain he was in. Furthermore, I was watching the shadow most of the time because the dancer was so expressive that you could see it in his shadow. I would say that there is a relationship between the dancer and the music because there are moments of staccato and the dancer has used this to do sharp movements. The music is called “Le Sablier”- By Alexandra Stréliski. I think the music goes with the contemporary style of music because it is a very solemn piece that is reflected in the music.

Richardson and I are different in the way we choreograph because I like to use the counts to make my movements dynamic however, I like the way he choreographs because it flows into the next section. Similarly, Isabella and I have used the same theme of mental health, specifically DID, to help us choreograph our section of the piece. We both agreed that because our section needed to represent a bad memory that we would have a soloist to be the abused and neglected child and the rest of the group to be the reason for the DID later on in life. I’ve recently watched a film about a psychiatric hospital called “Session 9”. In this, there are audio calls between a doctor and a patient with DID, as the film goes you learn that people who have had a traumatic childhood often have DID later in life as a coping mechanism. (Session 9, 2001) The different personalities sometimes know each other, however, it is only until the ninth session that you find what it was in the patient's childhood that triggered the effect of DID.

Bibliography

nhs.uk. 2020. Schizophrenia. [online] Available at: <https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Schizophrenia/> [Accessed 17 November 2020].

Session 9. 2001. [DVD] Directed by B. Anderson.