Hands

“Their film Hands...is an exquisite jewel: an unexpected, eloquent, seemingly simple yet intensely concentrated dance for a pair of hands

Nadine Meisner, Dance Theatre Journal Vol 12 No 3, 1995.

Choreographer Jonathan Burrows and I wanted to make a film that would treat just one part of the body, ignoring the whole that is the usual subject of dance. While Jonathan was excited by the beauty of a pair of hands and their particular movement possibilities, I had been intrigued by the expressive possibilities of human parts other than the face that so dominate and organise film framings. For both of us hands were important and beautiful. What kind of a film could we make?

There is a concept in mathematics called 'mapping' (I studied mathematics at university), a regime whereby a set of values from one domain might be converted to those of quite another. It seemed to me that in this way a musical score might be performed, the notes transposed into a series of gestures. And so our composer Matteo Fargion produced a score, with a few note values, organised rhythmically, while Jonathan devised a suitable set of hand movements. Music was then to be mapped as movement from the score. This seemed a novel procedure, enough to build the piece on. The piece was 'played', initially by a pianist, a repetiteur from the dance world. Rests, for me, with this method were a revelation. So too an otherworldly sense of purpose, and an embodiment that struck me as quite new.

Meanwhile, the immobility of the camera seemed to decide itself, bar an opening approach, to suggest that the movement had been in progress always, in a present perfect tense as it were. The close would be a matter of stillness sustained beyond easy counting, prediction and expectation frustrated.

The viewer should also have the feeling of approaching the performance, as if closing in on a roadside funerary stele on which the relief of a seated figure is shown perpetually gesturing, a coded performance with meaning that has been all but lost. The ephemerality of dance, caught and preserved on film is always memorialised, in a ritual of respect, a murmur of the past in the present. All of us are gifted and natural repeaters of gesture, not least because we are also always in search of meaning, and gestures are eloquent.

The film was commissioned by BBC TV and The Arts Council for a series of commissions called Dance for the Camera. We billed Hands as: 'dance reduced to a single pair of hands, cheekily ignoring the usual focus of televisual attention'. It was transmitted on BBC2 in July 1996, when it was seen by an astonishing 1.8 million viewers.

Hands has since been screened all over the world, most recently in an exhibition at Palazzo Grassi in Venice, during the 2022 Biennale, as curated by William Forsythe, and at ICA London in 2026, curated by Onyeka Igwe.

performer:  Jonathan Burrows

music: Matteo Fargion

music performed by: Balanescu Quartet

production design: Teresa McCann

lighting: Jack Hazan

sound mix: Hugh Strain

focus puller: Noel Balbirnie

dolly grip: Mick Duffiled

camera/editing: Adam Roberts

35mm film, scanned to 2K Digital 2026