Dark Matters

Saffy Setohy & Joanna Young

Dark Matters will be a series of participatory and performative interventions around Hammerfest by artists Saffy Setohy and Joanna Young. The artists will be in residence with Dansearena nord before presenting the results of their residency at DanseFestival Barents. Drawing on their expanded choreographic practices and collaborative interests, key themes in their research will be responses to place and people, our relationship to water, to darkness and the unknown, and the special conditions of Hammerfests’ environments at this time of year. 

Saffy and Joanna are socially engaged artists working across disciplines including dance and performance, visual art and sound. They are united in their interests in improvisation, interdisciplinarity, and collaborative working, with an ethos of generosity. They draw on ecological and new materialist thinking within their practices, leading them to explore non human-centric ways of working.  

EVENTS:

Koselig

Join artists in residence Saffy and Joanna to welcome the darker months with candlelight and togetherness. Meeting at the Arctic Cultural Centre, we will walk to the beach at the bottom of Fjellgata to enjoy the dark environment for a few moments. Then we will walk to their house nearby for food, performances and conversation. This event is a part of Panoramadance Walk. More information here. Please book at post@dansefestvivalbarents.no Subject field: Booking Panoramandance Walk.

Tracing Places

Friday 8th November 14.00-16.00 and Saturday 9th November 12.00-14.00
Hammerfest Library

FREE event- all ages welcome- come and go as you please

Join artists Saffy and Joanna in the library, where they will be drawing, reading, moving and making. You are invited to come and have a chat over coffee and biscuits, and join in some activities to contribute to a ‘choreographic book’, which will be made especially for the library and people of Hammerfest.

Photo: Joanna Young

Saffy Setohy is a Glasgow based dance artist working across and between choreography, performance, participatory practices and movement direction. Collaboration, interdisciplinarity, and relationship to place, people and context are at the heart of Saffy’s work. Choreographic projects have taken a variety of forms and have been commissioned and presented in the UK and internationally, in a range of rural and urban contexts. In recent years, Saffy has been an associate artist with InSitu, the European network for performance in public space. In 2017, she was awarded the choreographer bursary by Scottish Dance Theatre and Saltire Society, and was selected to participate in the Dance Artist/Curator Mentorship Scheme, supported by Siobhan Davies Dance. She was an ‘emerging artist in residence’ at the Southbank Centre, London from 2010-2012. 
Trained at Laban, Saffy has performed in works by choreographers including Henrietta Hale, Matthias Sperling, Angela Praed, Willi Dorner, and Yvonne Rainer. She is a member of, and on the board of The Work Room, an artist-led organisation supporting the development of choreographic practices. www.saffysetohy.co.uk 

Joanna Young is a choreographer based in Glasgow. Described by Dancing Times as “an adventurous choreographic voice”, her work often involves a meditative and sensorial tone, intricate crafting and time to tune into the movements between people, places, and things. Interdisciplinary collaboration is at the core of Joanna’s work. Projects and practices emerge by listening and responding, which facilitates an inclusive, co-authored and participatory process. Joanna works in both rural and urban contexts, which have resulted in outdoor, gallery and site-specific installations; stage productions; film; and audio walks. Over the past 12 years she has received Project Funding from the Arts Council of Wales and had numerous UK and International commissions. Recent collaborative projects include: ‘Conditions for possibility’ (funded through a Creative Wales Award); ‘And all the men we saw today’ (Commissioned by Southampton University); and ‘Unknown Places’ (Commissioned by Shropshire Inclusive Dance)’. In 2017 Joanna completed a Masters in Choreography (with distinction) from London Contemporary Dance School. 
Joanna regularly facilitates inclusive workshops in a range of education, community and health contexts. She is a founder member of Groundwork Pro (Cardiff), and member of artist-led collectives Interval (Bristol), Maynard Friends (Wales) and BoW Collective (Scotland). www.joannayoung.co.uk