Bodies of Water is a collaborative, interdisciplinary performance weaving together choreography, sound, visual art and participatory practices. Initiated by dance artist/choreographer Saffy Setohy in 2018, Bodies of Water was made collectively by Saffy, with composer/sound designer Nicolette Macleod, dance artist/choreographers Aya Kobayashi and Joanna Young, and lighting/stage designer Louise Gregory. Bodies of Water brings together their passion for choreographic practice and dedication to exploring our relationship to our environment in the age of climate crisis.
We encounter water in our everyday lives. It gives life and flows through us. Water is energy, it destroys and creates. The performance invites the audience to immerse themselves in an exploration of our relationship with the transformative element of water.
Bodies of Water aims to draw connections between our personal experiences as humans made mostly of water, our relationship to it politically and environmentally, and the materiality of water. Our body is a container of water, of memory, of experience and sensation. In the performance space you will see a range of clay containers which have been made by communities across Scotland, each object containing the imprints of a choreography of hands. Around 67% of our body mass is water. Water gives us life; we cry, sweat, consume and excrete it. It flows through us, we spill over. Everyone has some memory about or relationship to water. We each have stories and references about it. We might be afraid of it, in awe of it, drawn to it. We might live near it, on it, or too far from it. Water is energy, it destroys and creates.
Underpinning the making of Bodies of Water is a belief that if we can connect to and inhabit the realities of our bodies and experiences, we will relate to and more easily consider our environment, our communities and the challenges that we face. We invite you to immerse yourselves in celebration and exploration of our essential and complex relationship to this element. Our need for water connects us to all other living things.
“By swimming in the sea I cross the normal boundaries. I’m no longer on land but part of the body of water making up all the oceans of the world”. Amy Liptrot, The Outrun
“For unnumbered years it has welled from the rock, and flowed away. It does nothing, absolutely nothing, but be itself.” Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain
FURTHER INFO
www.saffysetohy.co.uk
www.joannayoung.co.uk
www.ayakobayashifootprints.wordpress.com
www.nicolette.me
Bodies of Water was originally co-commissioned in 2018 through the BRAW audience engagement project initiated by The Touring Network and supported by The Work Room. BRAW sought to foster stronger links between artist, audience and promoter in rural areas particularly, and to develop the audience experience from the start of making a work.
Bodies of Water toured Scotland in Autumn 2019 to;
* James Milne Institute, Findhorn (Findhorn Bay Arts)
* Wick High School (presentation for children with additional needs) (Lyth Arts)
* Reiss Village Hall, Caithness (Lyth Arts)
* The Barn, Banchory (The Barn Arts)
* Platform Easterhouse, Glasgow (Platform)
* West Barns Village Hall, West Barn, Dunbar (North Light Arts in partnership with The Brunton)
The performance evokes feelings of immersion, ritual, gentle playfulness, thoughts of audiences’ own water memories, the possibility of being in the moment, fluid sensations and ideas around the relationship between ourselves and our environment. Audiences are invited to watch, listen, touch (eg. making clay containers before the performance, handling objects from the beach, loch or river), remember (eg. water memories), imagine (eg. associations with the melting ice sculpture), and to work together on some gentle collective participatory actions (eg. pouring water, listening with careful attention). They are invited to be curious when exploring the performance environment before and afterwards.
The 2019 tour was funded by the Creative Scotland Open Project Fund. Supported by Findhorn Bay Arts, The Touring Network, The Work Room, Lyth Arts Centre, The Barn, Pavilion Dance via Surf the Wave seed generator fund, North Light Arts/John Muir Open with The Brunton.
The 2025 tour is funded by Creative Scotland through the Touring Fund for Theatre & Dance
