Yinka Esi Graves and Maya Taylor

Two collaborative solo works, first shared as part of LDIF’s online programmes in 2020 and 2021, come to life with Leicester’s historic Guildhall as a backdrop.

The Disappearing Act
Yinka Esi Graves

The Disappearing Act is a solo exploration of the ways in which Black women articulate their resistances to negation by Yinka Esi Graves.  Graves is particularly interested in methods of camouflage and mimicry that insidiously seep into the intimate realm, asking what the real cost of being viable is in a system that has only ever sought to exploit or at best commodify you.  The notion of crypsis, the ability an animal has to avoid observation or detection by other animals, as a predation strategy or an antipredator adaptation, is integral to the work. This digital exhibition and exploration will take you on a journey through the eyes of Miss La Lala.  Inspired by the nineteeth century acrobat and circus performer Olga Brown, depicted in Degas’ painting “Miss La la la at the Circus Fernando“, La Lala is the embodiment through which Yinka explores this idea of crypsis in The Disappearing Act.

Shape | Shifter
Maya Taylor

Shape | Shifter is a new work by American choreographer, Maya Taylor, exploring the strain she has often felt to assimilate as a mixed-race woman.  The solo interacts with words and music by Cubs the Poet and the trombonist Jeremy Phipps unravels/illuminates Maya’s journey as she works to defy the echo chamber of perceptions that have haunted her from adolescence to womanhood.  Throughout the work she searches for a renewed, self-actualised version of herself with a clear sense of identity, created on her own terms.

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