Blog: Within This Dust. Remembering 9/11

9/11 Memorial and Museum, NYC

There is an old adage in the dance world that says that every great choreographer has one dance in them. For Christopher Bruce, that is Ghost Dances. For Thomas Small, Artistic Director of Shaper/Caper, that is Within This Dust. 

A dance-theatre work that is carefully crafted, sensitively handled, and highly emotive and hopeful, Within This Dust is above all, an ode to life. Examining human loss, revealing the useless pretexts that impede us to focus on what’s really important, regretting the unsaid expressions of love, Within This Dust is a response to the 9/11 attacks to the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City in 2001. 

 Using an iconic picture by Richard Drew of the Falling Man- “I didn’t capture his death, I captured part of his life”- and an essay by Tom Junod on the identity of this person, Within This Dust is a celebration of life, an invitation to wake up and shake off all that is unnecessary to elevate our condition of humanity. 

 Enter the consequences. This event destroyed all the Disney-induced dreams, disintegrating a known to be safe narrative in the Western world’s psyche and creating a new reality that had not had precedent until then (sounds familiar?) It also gave birth to the controversial ‘war on terror’ and a fearful, despiteful, and othering look to the Muslim world.  

We have been extremely lucky and honoured to present Within this Dust at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in NYC in 2017, learning from their extraordinary resources, including their creative learning team who discussed the wider context, considerations, and implications of this complex event in such a humbling manner. We have also presented it in small community venues across rural Scotland, creating safe spaces to discuss the work and unearthing everybody’s memories of the event in post-show informal discussions that swiftly ended at the bar by a cosy open fire, sipping whisky as the conduit to ease the communication of challenging and encountered emotions that moved beyond the event and towards the universality of loss. 

Lisa Hood and Vince Virr

Pic by Mairi Fleck at Craignish Village Hall, Ardfern, Scotland

 2021 will mark the 20th anniversary of that tragic event and before this current crisis occurred we had plans to tour it throughout this year, starting with a couple of theatre venues at Rugby and Norwich in England due this week that will now have to wait. Edinburgh was to follow before finalising with additional dates in London, followed by another visit to NYC. We don’t know yet whether this intended tour will be possible but what we do know is that “when words fail, and even memory becomes unbearable, art responds to remind us that those who fell do not disappear but are, rather, transformed as Within this Dust reanimates the falling man in his final moments and emerges as a testament to our shared vulnerability and, above all, humanity” Dr. Lindsay Balfour, PhD, 9/11 Memorial Mellon Post-doctoral Fellow and NYU Visiting Scholar 

Art changes lives. Not singlehandedly but as part of a conscious effort to rewrite the narrative, to Build Back Better, to invest time, effort, and love in the wellbeing driven societies of the future. We are needed, #NeverMoreNeeded, so let’s show up and be counted. There is a great future to create together just waiting around the corner. 

Excerpts of Within this Dust will be available to watch-a-long online this Friday 11th September at 7pm BST. There will be a Q&A with the choreographer afterwards and the event is available via our Village Hall Patreon page for as little as £2 https://www.patreon.com/shapercaper

Hayley Dixon

Pic by Maria Falconer

“Orphaned office papers and dust from the pulverized Twin Towers become metaphors for the arbitrariness of what survived, inseparable from our collective memories of who vanished and the humanity that would outlive the devastation”. Jan Seidler Ramirez, 9/11 Memorial Chief Curator and EVP, Collections