On Dancing Underwater
In my day job, I work with organisations across the arts and charity sectors, supporting people to find their creativity through writing. So, I’m always on the hunt for poems, images and music to use as inspiration for poetry. And this short film, directed by André Musgrove and choreographed and performed by Ariadna Hafez, really caught my eye. It’s called The Deepest Dance, and shows Hafez dancing around shipwrecks under the ocean off the coast of Barbados. The film is glorious and the behind the scenes making of video is also well worth a watch! Here's my poem, inspired by the film: The Deepest Dance Waterlogged, she haunts the wreck. A lithe-limbed phantom of sea salt circumstance. Slick ocean swirls like a spell, suspended between surface and sea floor, twisting through coral-covered ruins; ships brought low by tide and time. Submerged metal roughness, red with rust, this bride of barnacles, gentle as gos...