Permission to Rest: How Director Keisha Tonte Dokubo Uses Urban Dance to Find Healing in a Busy World
- 1 day ago
- 10 min read
Please tell us about your background in filmmaking and choreography. How did you learn to make films?
My love for screendance was ignited during my time studying Bachelor of Arts Degree in diverse dance styles at IRIE! dance theatre, London (2020-2023). My course was interrupted by Covid, but not for too long. It was in this space that I started to create productions based around healing through Christian urban dance and the Covid interruption taught me how necessary it is to capture all my work on film. This has been strategically ingrained in my process ever since. I enjoyed the process and began to lean into it.
Choreography was not new to me as I had been a dance teacher for over 20 years by then. I learnt film through collaboration with a cinematographer David Llewellyn, who later worked with me on PAUSE, studying other film makers' processes and just doing it.
What was the initial seed that compelled you to tell this specific story about these women, and why did you feel it was best suited for a short film format rather than a feature?
It starts with what I coined 'embodied scripture'. The practice of being spiritually led to scriptures from the Bible and interpreting them with the body. In order to meditate, build faith and obtain healing. My own healing testimony (a Christian term to describe the story of how God guides one through a difficult time) played a big part in why I create pieces about healing. I suffered for over 40 years with chronic eczema. I turned to my faith, lifestyle changes and movement to help me through a two year process to clear skin and I understood that healing was possible. My goal was to inspire others, who are ready to hear it, to build faith for healing through dance.
I envisioned the piece with four dancers (including myself), I auditioned and worked with them using freestyle methodology and embodied testimonies to explore their own healing stories. Hopefully, building their faith too. I chose a Biblical character for each dancer and we studied each character's testimony and talked about the alignment with our own stories, what we could learn from them and ultimately how we can translate this story of hope to the audience. My character was based on Miriam, who is Moses' sister (Moses who is well known for parting the Red sea). I focused on her story in the book of Numbers chapter 12 in the Bible and she at one point was impacted by a skin condition. She in time was healed through the prayer of her brother.
I am relatively new in film so a feature is something that I would think about later down the line. Right now I am exploring possibilities for short films.
Urban dance is often celebrated for its high energy and explosive dynamics. How did you adapt this physical vocabulary to explore themes of stillness, exhaustion, and spiritual renewal?
I often tell my dance students that 'stillness,' is just as much dance as movement. Without stillness you cannot appreciate movement. Pausing fosters a moment for the audience to breathe and digest what just happened. If someone talks to you non-stop, eventually it becomes overwhelming. It's the same with dance. Add some commas and full stops. Then you hear what's in between.
I direct the dancers to pause, for longer than feels comfortable, and that's not easy, we're conditioned to be busy. The juxtaposition of energy and stillness hopefully highlighted the need to stop.
In PAUSE rest was encouraged both in the choreography but also during weekly meetings with the team we asked the question, how did you pause this week?
The choreographic performances by the women in various locations feel incredibly mature and deeply felt. Could you share how these movement-led stories were developed? How long did the choreography and rehearsal process take to achieve such emotional and physical maturity?
We had approximately eight rehearsals over two months and some pre-visits to location before filming to think through the pathways. Season one in the forest was linked to the Biblical idea of being in the 'wilderness' season, the hard place in the healing journey where it feels rough. We tried to highlight one particular person's story in each season, so in season two we come out of the wilderness and enter into everyday life. The wilderness eventually played out with themes of suicide, with oppressive forces driving that. Season two played with the idea that no one is exempt from trouble, but there are options in how we deal with it.
In season three I wanted to highlight the idea of busyness, whilst showing the audience that even in that, there is permission to add a full stop or at least a pause. I taught a short phrase which included hip hop and Caribbean movements which the dancers were encouraged to improvise with, dissect and bring back to life with the intention of replicating city life hustle but in character. This scene was based on a Scripture in Psalms 36 verse 6 : "We are merely moving shadows, and all our busy rushing ends in nothing. We heap up wealth, not knowing who will spend it".
The final season was personal. I often find a sense of calm beside water, always have. Due to the time of year we were filming and other factors we could not get to the beach to film as planned, so we had to get creative about achieving the same feeling but showcasing it into the life of the last character who was a creative on a stage, whilst retaining the reference to waters in the movement. Our rehearsals leading up to this were done on a local beach on sand. Maybe in part two or three of this trilogy we will get there.
How did you select these specific performers, and how much of their personal lived experiences or relationship with faith influenced the final movement on screen?
I had an existing relationship with two of the dancers, I worked with contemporary dancer Gabriella Leutzinger in a local dance school, where I teach hip hop. I studied Masters in Diasporic dance styles together with Afrobeats dancer Lola Ameh. She had heard all about my ideas for screen dance as we studied and shared our practice. She helped bring it to life.
Deborah Godchaser, I met actually during a PAUSE audition, which was being held in a shared community dance space in London. She was working on her own practice and my Christian urban music got her attention. She recognised me from another event where she saw me perform and had wanted to connect, so we got talking after the audition. This shared space was designed for creatives to network and it worked. It was good timing for us as Christian artists seeking to move more with faith based practice and she brought a lot of her experience in the professional dance industry to the team, having just finished working as a dancer in the Lion King.
The dancers were given the opportunity to add their own choreography. You will see this in season two where they delve into their characters and draw from their own personal experiences in the home environment.
How did you and your cinematographer collaborate on the 'cinematic framing' to capture this delicate contrast without disrupting the flow of the dance?
Effective communication. Myself and the cinematographer / composer David Llewellyn of Dellauno Productions, had regular meetings throughout the process to visualise the intention of each season, hash out the story line and elements of continuity. We were also adapting as we went along. Making use of the script, the story and planning out, as we were learning during the process what works best. The shot by shot requirements and adapting as necessary. This made the process more efficient. Helped get the best out of the dancers, who were encouraged to also offer their ideas. Cinematic experimentation played its part and feedback throughout the process.
I would also add that each season was given its own visual identity to reflect the stage of the healing journey. The forest sequences made use of colour, lighting and sound to feel immersive and uncertain, placing the audience in the wilderness alongside the dancers. The domestic scenes were more confined and relatable to everyday life, while the later chapters gradually opened into more symbolic spaces and kept simple and clean. This clear progression helped the cinematography support the story without interrupting the flow of the dance.
The locations in the film play a significant role. How did you select these environments, and how did the physical spaces influence or challenge the performers' choreography during the shoot?
The first three locations were planned in, to complement the storyline. The Forest was the most challenging, with regards to lighting, timing and weather conditions as it was filmed leading up to winter months in London, UK. However this reflected the wilderness theme, the most difficult part of the healing journey is like winter, bleak and unpredictable.
We used a team members home for season two filming, but this was also strategic. A welcome rest-bite from the forest and a place that had its own healing story behind it.
We talked our way into using a local (pub) public house after our agreed previous location suddenly became unavailable on the day of the shoot. The pub owner was lovely and it spoke to the power of community and provision that we speak of in the piece, but also it was a better space, divine intervention at work.
The beach was the intended location for the last scene, but our plan B was a blacked out studio. Again, my dance community stepped in and gave us access to a wonderful studio and we re-created the beach scene for the stage. That space also helped us find more creative ideas. Some of which may enter the next film, we drafted in dancer and choreographer Mercedes Lewis who not only got us access to the space but helped with creative direction in the scenes I was dancing in.
How did you visually represent the transition between physical exhaustion and spiritual renewal? Was there a specific choreographic motif or camera technique used to signal this shift?
Clear intention, effective characterization, research, conversation and exploration. As part of the research process I visited a monastery to understand faith based pausing at its extreme after speaking with a dancer who regularly visits monasteries as a form of retreat practice, this informed my messaging to the team and choreographic requirements. To bring out immersion into the scenes one of my methods involved intense dialoging with the dancers in character. We did this until the atmosphere became emotionally charged and integrated emotive freestyle improvisation and then we shot the scene.
With regards to visual representation and camera technique, the transition from exhaustion to renewal is represented through the environments themselves. The film moves from the uncertainty of the wilderness, through more confined and pressured spaces, before arriving at a simplified and symbolic stage environment. As we move through the healing journey, the spaces move from survival, to an awakening, to joy and finally deep reflection, giving space for the audience to experience this pause in their own bodies.
As a director, how did working on 'PAUSE' impact your own relationship with rest and stillness within your creative practice? Did you find yourself needing to practice what you preach during the production?
I am still practicing PAUSE in my own life today. I no longer feel guilty for taking some time out, or feel the need to fill every waking moment with activity. I am definitely more aware and intentional about rest and that was the goal.
Short films require immense narrative compression. How did you decide what to focus on and what to leave off-screen (or in the subtext) to keep the story impactful?
This film is longer than I first anticipated, I had a lot of ideas, however the editing helped to zone in and I had written a script which brought focus. The main thing was to keep going back to the films initial intention, have we told the story for this season or not? There are whole scenes that we could not include due to location access, so we had to get creative and focus on the story line.
Most powerful short films rely on a singular, striking turning point or emotional climax. Can you guide us through the creative and technical process behind your film's most critical scene?
The film does touch on themes such as suicide and the use of water to wash away (in reference to Christian baptism Acts 8:36 The Bible) the old life and old negative thinking and emerge out of the water with a new mindset and outlook on life. "As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, 'Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized?'. Acts 8:36 The Bible".
We originally wanted to use a real baptism pool, or the sea but the idea that the Bible says wherever there is water an individual can be baptised, so we used the bath as a symbol of this. We played around with a number of ideas to bring in the idea of water. Going to the beach in cold conditions led us to talk about bringing heated or warm water and creating the illusion of being immersed, rather than letting a dancer go into the freezing water. We tried to dance a version of water washing, which did not go into the final cut in the end and lastly we stuck to one main water scene in the bath and references to it through sound of water in various scenes, the forest, the city solo where a dancer plays with water in a cup and then the ending where we hear the sound of water again to end.
It is often said that a film is 'rewritten' in the editing room. Did the pacing, structure, or even the meaning of your film shift during post-production compared to your original script?
The meaning and structure actually remained quite close to the original, because we were in regular communication about each season. There were some ideas we had in the beginning that were phased out as the process developed. There were moments of experimentation with editing of the film which brought it to life, which were not in the original plan. Colour, sound effects, for example and emphasis due to technicalities or aesthetic choices. Everyone who watches will draw their own meaning which is fine, we are aiming for a discussion, which is what we are doing right now. Maybe a question asked or a mindset challenged is what matters to me.
If you had to distill the core thematic question, moral dilemma, or message of your film into a single sentence, what would it be?
Permission to rest.
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