Artistic interests

My photo
Cornwall, United Kingdom
My practice often involves working with improvisation, attention to imagery and sensation, and text/writing, all coming from or working in relation to the body. I am concerned with the relationship between the audience and the performance, and the politics of the performance space. The themes in my work are often exploring what it means to be human, and the embodied self in relation to our lived environment. I have an ongoing curiosity around notions of absence and presence, memory, intimacy and states of transition or change. A concern with how the female body is respresented in performance is also an emerging commonality in a lot of my work. Some of my performances have taken place outside of the theatre space, being in the form of installations, video and site-based works. As a teacher I enjoy facilitating people to find their own means of expression, and to find dynamism and ease of movement with a sense of the embodied and whole self.

Monday 30 July 2007

Impulse Response


This work was created as my BA dissertation. 
Impulse Response is an interactive performance installation, combining live electronic sound, video projection and dance performance. All these elements were created collaboratively and are structurally interdependent on each other. They are grouped together into six themed ‘events’ which could be performed in any order. The sequence of these events is dictated by the movement of the audience over a floor pattern, who are in turn dispersed and displaced by the dancers’ actions. Each event has a very specific reference attached to it, derived from the emotional resonance and physical qualities inherent in various landscapes and seasons. The interdependency of all the elements in the installation is a conceptual reference to ecosystems, climate change and human impact on the environment. The audience may experience the performance as a game, or set of random events, yet these have an underlying order or structure - much like nature itself. There is also a dissolving of boundaries between audience and performer as both are in the same space and in close proximity, each affecting the other’s behaviour and experience. The audiences role is challenged, as they are assimilated into the environment they are incident upon.






Invisible Lines (2012)

Invisible Lines (2012)
a performance action involving the negotiation of space and time between two people connected only by an almost invisible fishing wire

Passing Place (2011)

Passing Place (2011)
A structured, improvised duet created for the historical Jacobs Ladder site in Falmouth, Cornwall

Towards Stillness (2009)

Reworked version performed and filmed at Arnolfini, Bristol 2010. Premiered at Dancekiosk Hamburg 2009, and performed since at venues and events including Outlet Festival Germany, Salisbury Arts Centre,Abundance Festival Sweden. Towards Stillness integrates structured improvisational dance with live sound and video to create an immersive installation. The audience experience the performance in the same space as the performance action, and are invited to witness, and become influential in, the emergent properties of the installation. A study on ideas around transformation and collectivity, the work provides an opportunity for audience and performer roles to become more fluid, a meditation on what it means to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. This project has been supported at various stages by the Lisa Ullman Travelling Scholarship Fund, London Metropolitan University, the European Commission Culture Programme through Dance Beyond Borders, Laban, Penryn College and Creative Skills.

Between Stone and Star- Shunt Theatre 2010

Performance/choreography: Saffy Setohy Video/Sound: Rainer Hutber. Inspired by the poem Evening by Rainer Maria Rilke, Stone and Star takes as a starting point the notion of being left alone in an ‘in-between’ space, a place full of possibilities and without certainties. Created especially for the second level space in the Shunt Lounge, which has a glass floor and ceiling, the piece also revisits a common theme of the artists' work together: the influences of architecture and environment on thought, behaviour and movement. A structured improvisation, the performance took place over a thirty minute duration. Audience members were free to walk in and out of the performance space, and to stand or sit where they pleased in relation to the performers.

Towards Stillness (Image: Uwe Brodmann)

Towards Stillness (Image: Uwe Brodmann)
A performance at Outlet Festival, Germany 2009

Entropy (2008)