Benji Reid: Find Your Eyes

With Find Your Eyes, Benji Reid has made a performance that is unlike any you will have seen. Other artists have approached the creative process itself as performance; but no one else has combined photography, choreography and theatre to make such striking, often surreal images to tell an emotional rollercoaster of a story.

Find Your Eyes draws on Benji Reid’s work both as an award-winning photographer and a pioneer of hip hop theatre to create images in real time in front of the audience. He sits at the centre of the stage, his ‘studio’, with three dancers posing for the camera; as he shoots his models, the iamges appear on large screens. The performance priogresses with the photoshoot becoming more and more elaborate, interwoven with episodes of Reid’s own life …

“This performance is a meditation on tragedy and immense joy,” says Reid. “It serves as a conversation with myself to unearth where I’ve been all these years – a dialogue about struggling with alcohol, grappling with the immense pain of my mother’s stroke, and contending with the depths of mental health struggles, shame, and guilt. However, this work is also a celebration of evolution, a journey of moving forward, finding breath, discovering love, and embracing life’s beautiful imperfections.”

This Arab World premiere is presented with the support of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels; there’s a second show tomorrow (Saturday 20 September).