Thomas Bos is a Dutch director, dancer and artist who graduated from the Utrecht School of the Arts in 2013. He works primarily in film and video, while also being a core member of the dance collective 155 (eenvijfvijf), which he co-leads with his brother Erik Bos.
West is a short dance film by the collective 155, created during a 10,000-kilometre motorcycle journey from Utrecht in the Netherlands to Accra in Ghana. A group of friends sets off on the road, leaving everyday life behind as they travel through changing landscapes, cities and a constant stream of new impressions. The camera follows them as they ride, rest, race and spend time together, while their experience of the journey repeatedly spills over into movement. Synchronized jumps, dance sequences and improvised moments become a way of capturing something that a camera alone cannot fully record.
“The past is just us in funny clothes,” Mike Tyson once said. Perhaps because film can never capture everything that happens along the way, West turns to another form of recording. Impressions are not stored in words, but in the body. Movement becomes a memory in the making—direct, spontaneous and not always planned. With humour and lightness, West brings together travel, friendship and dance, suggesting that the most instinctive moments of creation can also become the most honest way of remembering what we have experienced.