An interview with dancer and physical theatre performer, Sophie Utting.
I wanted to learn more about the relationship between performance, the body and sound. Sophie is a dancer primarily but has performed with Nunah Theatre Company doing physical theatre, involving physical performance without speech to tell a story.
I was interested in the passive sounds our bodies make when in motion, the unintentional noises that come from activity and what emotions or experiences they may convey or emphasise.
Sophie talked about a warm up activity she does with her students involving a freestyle dancing game where the rule is that you express the motions you make with your breathing and this, it turn, effects the way you move. Here, words are not used to convey a thought or emotion but physical sounds. This activity places importance on physical expression as oppose to verbal and it means each individual can make up their own, personal language, without conforming to style or being restrained by convention. It is used as a warm up because the participants can freely express themselves, the day they’ve had, what mood they’re in, what food they’ve eaten, without judgement from the others.
In doing some solo projects for her degree Sophie accidentally discovered how integral sound is to the work she has done in the past while on a visit to Dartmoor. She videoed herself picking up pebbles, making a pile in her hand and letting them fall to the ground. The sounds the pebbles made were augmented by the quiet surroundings and gave the action emphasis and punctuation.
Another piece she recorded at Dartmoor involved a sort of collaboration with a fallen tree. The dance was inspired by the tree’s various textures and the forms of it’s branches, the atmosphere surrounding her and the sounds of the birds. She talks about the squelching mud beneath her bare feet and the splashes of the water contrasting the hard, shiny bark of the tree.
Overall what I got from interviewing Sophie was how subtle, passive noises are important in performance. They can illustrate the materials and textures of the performance site or the mood of the performer and how he/she interacts with the surroundings.
Alice Bouttell 