Play performed in Devon

I recently directed a new short live dance work for the stage for Devon-based Spindrift Dance Company. This work had its first airing at two events in Devon recently.

Play

 

Choreography: Saffy Setohy with the performers

 

Performers: Sarah Farrow-Jones, Rosaenna Anderson, Suzie West

 

Sound: Luke Robinson

 

In our adult lives we can sometimes lose touch with a sense of play and embodied curiosity. How can a seemingly simple and commonplace object open up a world of tactile exploration and adventure?

 

Image: Claire Summers

 

Soliloquy private view- Southbank Centre 15th June

Soliloquy- Friday 16th March Barbican Theatre Plymouth opens 6.30pm

April-August 2011 update

Well it's been a busy few months...

  April heralded What Now Festival at Siobhan Davies Studio, where I presented documentation from Towards Stillness. I also began a collective with a group of other dance artists, so that we can share and explore our practices, questions and research processes.

  May saw the performance of my commissioned work for Fal River Festival in Cornwall. Collaborating with dance artist Emmalena Fredriksson, I created and performed a duet for two sites called Passing Place. Made for Jacobs Ladder (a steep and narrow flight of stone steps) and Princes Pier in Falmouth, the improvised scores were developed from ideas around meeting and departing, as well as taking the particular characteristics of each site into consideration.

  June brought the opportunity to teach the BA choreography students at UCF/Dartington for the first time. I delivered a week of classes that included somatic approaches to exploring movement, improvisation using imagery, and set sequences. I also presented documentation of Towards Stillness at On the Wire, an artist-curated event at The Poly in Falmouth, and performed their with Freefall Dance.

 In July I took a week-long workshop with Rosemary Butcher in London, which explored approaches to making and embodying improvisation scores. The week was very stimulating and I made a visual multi-layered score from drawings, collage and tracing paper for the work which records the particularities of the physical score such as its textures, body patterns, space, context and essence.

 I have just been to Edinburgh Fringe Festival, seeing an exciting range of dance works and meeting up with friends and colleagues.

Towards Stillness goes to Sweden

Reynir and I have just returned from our latest performance of Towards Stillness at Abundance Festival, Karlstad, Sweden. It is always a pleasure to perform for a new audience and in a new environment. Check out our interview:

Performing in Sweden

So, with only a few more days until our performance of Towards Stillness at Abundance Festival, Reynir and I are preparing ourselves, gathering our memories of the work, preparing to rehearse (kindly supported by Laban) and generally getting fired up about another exploration into the work. The experiment continues....

Towards Stillness at Salisbury Arts Centre

On the 3rd March Towards Stillness was presented at Salisbury Arts Centre. The performance was part of a platform of selected emerging artists, curated by Theatreworks, Devon, followed by discussion with the audience around the relationship between audience and performance. An interesting and positive event, (my first performance in the Southwest region in fact), resulting in useful feedback. Thanks to Theatreworks, Salisbury Arts Centre and all who attended.

Towards Stillness

Towards Stillness incorporates sound, live surround video projection and structured improvisation to create an immersive installation. The audience experiences the performance in the same space as the performance action, and are invited to witness, and become influential in, the changing states of the performer.
Performance and Choreography: Saffy setohy
Sound and Video: Reynir Hutber
 

The work is connected to a long-standing interest in creating a new format for performance composition linking ideas around the organisation of living systems, and Chaos Theory. 

A study on transformation, individualism and collectivity, I am interested in how each element in the installation can influence the behaviour of one another. 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 as we flux between chaos and stillness. 

Towards Stillness was created during a series of European residencies (Dance Beyond Borders) and premièred at DanceKiosk Hamburg 2009 with a subsequent performance at Outlet Festival, Braunschweig, Germany.


My work during Dance Beyond Borders was supported by the Lisa Ullmann Travelling Fund.

Metropolis

I was commissioned to choreograph a show for Vidal Sassoon, showcasing the companies new collection and designs. The show was based on Fritz Lang's early silent film Metropolis, and used sound and video.

This was the first time I had worked with models. The work was a success, winning the award for Best Show in the London section of the company. 

Spectre

An ongoing multi-discipline research project started in 2008 with Reynir Hutber and Ben Sassen under the name Unearthed Performance. Spectre deals with notions of absence and presence, and draws thematic inspiration from sources such as Haruki Murakami's surreal novel After Dark Spectre is concerned with exploring traditional illusionist tricks along with more contemporary media devices useful in the manufacture of deception. There is also an interest within this project in creating a work that is transferable in its format and presentation. Performers: Saffy Setohy, Lizzie Sells, Janine Harrington. Residencies and sharings 2009 May- Dancebase, Edinburgh, culminating in a sharing of the research which drew on Edinburgh's popular ghost tours and walks. An assembled audience was guided into a series of encounters with performers. The performers appeared to them through various architectural devices of separation and mediation. Dancers were framed behind transparent ceiling tiles, reflected in mirrored windows and separated by glass panels. April- Laban, London. Focusing on development of movement language that communicate a sense of absence. Looking at character and narrative in relation to the theme. What Now Festival, Siobhan Davies Studio, London. Presentation of video, sound and photographic work related to the project. 2008 November- London Metropolitan University, London. A sharing of the video, sound and photographic work related to the project. A short discussion of the work by Saffy Setohy. August- The Bauhaus, and various locations, Weimar, Germany. Video and photographic research related to the project culminating in a short film to document the residency. Laban, London. The projects first residency, explorating the themes in relation to use of light and shadow, projection and sound.  

Entropy

Choreographer: Saffy Setohy
Sound: The 2.2 KillaVolt Cables (Ben Sassen and Reynir Hutber)
Original dancers: Alice Mackenzie, Lizzie Sells, Rosanna Chierico, Tiina Putus.

Inhabitants of a confined world grapple with shadows as they struggle to preserve their identity in a world of chaos. A quartet, with commissioned music by The 2.2 KillaVolt Cables.

“…..clear dancing and a distinctive sense of mood” Zoe Anderson, Resolution! 2008.

Entropy is the result of a creative process spanning two years, an exploration into the effects of the London city environment on its inhabitants. The choreographer examines in this work the corporeality of the body in relation to architecture, spatial arrangement and tempo of the city. Non-linear narratives and interactions are created through duets and solos, characters emerge, and there are moments of group unison in the work. The sense of time in the work is played with to create an atmosphere that ranges from darkly surreal to playful and metaphorical.

A re-imagined world is created, drawing from exploration into the reality and subjective experience of an existing one.

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.