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 gossamer.
Her eyes dark as the broken 
mouths of sunken hulks.

 She slips through diaphanous shadows 
as surface lights paint polygon paths
across that undulating ceiling of sky.

Echoes fade against the clamouring 
beat of her underwater heart.
Breathlessness rising, 
a turquoise distance darkening.

This is a slow-motion unravelling, 
white gown swept by relentless eddies,
shifting delicate tendrils 


of tension


and release.


Still image from The Deepest Dance by André Musgrove





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