Lee AdcockWords can’t quite capture the overwhelming isolation of dysphoria. Blood calcifies into lead; a black hole swallows your chest; treasured memories fade to dusk and curses circle like sharks around the shell you no longer recognize as yours. Words rarely help, either. What language could reach you, anyway, when you’ve drifted so far into the abyss?
Samuel Laubscher is fluent in languages without words. By day, he snaps photos for films. By night, he helps lead the post-rock enclave Of the Vine, who paint rolling fields and fireworks without lyrics. And with his solo project Hot Air Henry, he can shed light on our personal voids with another silent medium—the art of dance.
In 2017, Laubscher’s video for blissful single “Thought Loops” captured Erin Murray and her graceful spins in the studio above the former Mammal Gallery. The film would go on to earn the distinction of Official Selection at the Aesthetica Short Film Festival in York, UK. This year, Laubscher is releasing two videos, each with a different dancer. The first, “Iron Down a Drain,” illustrates how a person descends into dysphoria. The second, “All We Have Seen,” shows how they learn to live inside themselves.
Laubscher and I are both chilling in our respective houses, with our respective kittens, as we discuss the two films over a phone call. (Well, 8-month-old Pepper is technically his roommate’s pet, but for now she’s the designated house cat.) For him, “Iron Down a Drain” conveys the yearning for normalcy and how the pressure to reach that equilibrium can cause a person to spiral out of control. Yet, as he shows in “All We Have Seen,” Laubscher firmly believes that those who struggle in that void shouldn’t have to strive for any standard of stability except their own.
“[The video is] an acceptance, but not in a push-aside way,” he explains. “We can feel free, even in our darkness, because we’re still who we are.”
More than words
The differences between the two videos are striking.
In “Iron Down a Drain,” we find Katie James in an austere studio space in Dundee, Scotland. It’s dusk, and she’s fully clothed in a modest blouse and skirt. James staggers back a few paces, then turns to stare at her hands, as if she can’t recognize them as her own. Slowly they reach back and comb through her hair in a vain attempt to regain composure. But then confusion sinks in and before long she crashes to the floor on her knees. Around the 3-minute mark, as the sun continues to set and shadows gather into the studio, static crackles between Laubscher’s cascading piano work. But after four minutes of this struggle, after lying on her back and pedaling to nowhere against the darkening sky, we see James stare at her hands one last time. She then flips them—palms up—like the Buddha.
At the start of “All We Have Seen,” the camera zooms in on Rose Alice’s taped feet. As she sits up and stretches toward the daylight, we see she’s wearing just a workout bra and leggings. We also see that she’s not sequestered in a studio, but outside on London’s King Street. People in the background walk about and carry on with their business, unperturbed by Alice’s performance. Likewise, she doesn’t seem to mind her passing audience; she flexes her arms smoothly, with the solace and control of a seasoned yogi. No feedback interferes this time with Laubscher’s music as the piano flutters skyward. And even when Alice sits back down against the wall, she does so slowly, with intent instead of despair.
Laubscher grew up around dance. As a child, he attended a few ballet classes. His sister, meanwhile, was an avid dancer and was always practicing around the house. So for Laubscher, complementing his instrumental work with dance videos seemed to make perfect sense.
“I feel like [dance is] something I understand more than words,” he tells me.
Not long after “Thought Loops” came out, two dancers started following Laubscher on Instagram. He was mourning the death of a family member and had just written the music for two new compositions to express his state of mind. His latest video had just been nominated for Aesthetica, so he knew he’d be traveling up to York soon, and both of his new followers hailed from the UK. So he reached out and asked if they’d be interested in performing in his next two works. Both said yes.
“It’s one of those opportunities, where you just sneak it in, as opposed to someone giving it to us,” Laubscher says. “It was really nice to have this collaborative atmosphere.”
Night and day
When I first watched both films, I thought that Laubscher had a hand in the choreography. Both dancers mirrored the messages that the musician wanted to convey—James spiraled and tumbled in the darkness, while Alice stretched serenely under the sun. But when I ask about how much agency Laubscher had in each video, he exclaims, “I won’t even pretend to be a choreographer!” Instead, he discussed the themes of each song with James and Alice, and together they brainstormed ideas for settings. But the choreography, he told me, was up to the performers.
For “Iron Down A Drain,” James plotted out her stoic movements beforehand. “With her work, it was very fluid but more structured,” Laubscher notes. “[She] had this very specific story, because she really connected with the brief.”
He doesn’t tell me exactly what her experience is with depression or dysphoria, but from what he does reveal, I can gather that she’s struggled with the abyss. “She connected with [the song] on a level of the idea that a lot of people who deal with depression and anxiety. We all understand this isolated experience, and that feeling of ‘oh, no one else is feeling this way, and will anyone understand me.'”
Still, while James had plotted her dance, Laubscher hadn’t counted on the rapid sunset. “We knew it was going to get dark, and we wanted an evening look,” he explains. “But we were in Scotland, where she’s from, and we were at her studio, and I forgot that the sun sets much earlier. So we were chasing the light the whole time.”
As the two worked through the video, night crept into the studio. Although it wasn’t part of the original plan, the encroaching darkness nicely mirrored the psychic descent into self-annihilation. “It worked out for the film, but I was definitely panicking when I first got there,” Laubscher admits.
In contrast, Alice mapped out her entire routine—including the outfit and the taped feet—on the day of the shoot. “I could definitely choreograph something, but I feel like I will do better hearing it on the day, in finding these expressions,” she told Laubscher.
And so, after a few takes to lock in the right setting and locate the groove, Alice came up with the graceful stretches that we see in the final footage. “It is very vulnerable what she’s wearing, and she’s dancing in public,” Laubscher says. “But she had enough comfort in her presence to [still dance]… I admired that.”
Unique, yet similar
Throughout our conversation, Laubscher can’t stress enough how much he respected the fellow artists he collaborated with. “I enjoyed both of them, so very much,” he tells me. It’s really been an honor to work with them.”
He could also relate to James, who seemed to share the same mental landscape. “With Katie, I felt like I was working with a contemporary, of someone who is pursuing their own art, through whatever difficulties come up,” he says. “And maybe the outside world can’t see it, because you hide [those difficulties] well. So we were able to connect on that.”
And while Laubscher knew he wanted to talk about self-imposed isolation, he didn’t realize how much he’d internalized that in himself. “That was an awakening for me, hearing the different experiences of the dancers I worked with,” he says. “Because it was like, oh, I brought this to them, thinking that maybe they’ll understand, or they’ll think, oh wow, who’s that person? But instead, the human experience is so unique, yet similar to a lot of people.”
Case in point: we both love our kittens. And we could both recall mornings when we couldn’t rise from bed, until our pets reminded us—as only kitties can, with their chirps and squeaks that transcend the language barrier—why we needed to wake up and get going.
The soundtrack to each film is available as part of an EP entitled “...In Their Place Would Be Silence.” Currently, the record is available digitally, with pre-orders available for both a limited-edition cassette (featuring additional tracks) and a square clear lathe-cut 7″.
More Info
Web: hotairhenry.com
Bandcamp: hotairhenry.bandcamp.com
Facebook: @HotAirHenry
Instagram: @HotAirHenry
SoundCloud: @hotairhenry