Dance company SAY discuss their new work the album
News Story
the album by SAY is a brand-new show that lets audiences experience the ecstasy of music gigs through boundary-breaking contemporary dance. Created by SAY, a dance company created by award-winning artists Sarah Golding and Yuki Masui (The Place's Work Place Artist), the album is a fusion of music, personal stories and dance.
the album will engage live local musicians from each of the participating locations, to showcase the wide range of regional talent on people’s doorsteps. Ahead of the performance at The Place, Sarah and Yukiko spoke to us about the album to tell us more…
Question: Please tell us about yourselves and why you formed SAY?
Sarah and Yuki: SAY was born at the back end of 2019 when we were working for our friend and brilliant choreographer, Cathy Waller. Although we had crossed paths long before that during our training at Trinity Laban and at many auditions, this was the first time we actually danced together. After one rehearsal we stayed behind to just make moves to a song (‘All for Us’ by English rapper Labrinth) and something about just dancing to lyrics and a beat felt super euphoric and we were like: "How can we make this our job"!
Q: What inspired you to create the album?
Sarah and Yuki: Both of us had a similar journey into dance. Our earliest dance-related memories were dancing to songs with our friends in the playground or rehearsing with a CD player in whatever location we could find. We created movement based on our enjoyment for the track we were dancing to.
Somehow throughout training and making a living out of dance this innocence and pure joy for making movement was lost. We made the album to remind ourselves and others that we should dance how we want and to the music that inspires us unapologetically.
Q: the album is touring to different venues across the UK. What will it be like to perform at The Place?
Sarah and Yuki: The Place has been part of this project from the inception through Choreodrome and we are super excited to have this show at The Place. It'll be like a HOMECOMING :) Also, Yuki presented their first ever piece at Resolution years ago, and since then it's been a journey presenting their works or performing in the theatre. And so we're super excited to bring the album to The Place - it's gonna be vibes.
Q: What do you hope audiences will experience?
Sarah and Yuki: Well....we think there is a song on the album for everyone, so we hope that for at least three minutes during the show, everyone has a little groove! We also hope and encourage the audience to treat the show like a gig. We want to remove the formalities and encourage people to interact with us and each other.
Q: There’s also the album: skool edition and the album: live. What can you tell us about these projects?
Sarah and Yukiko: the album: skool edition is a show that is very close to our hearts. This was the first show we performed together. We did this over two weeks to over a thousand primary school kids. It is a fun family friendly version of the album with audience participation, family friendly upbeat songs and colourful costumes!
the album: live is a little snippet of the album with an exclusive appearance and special guest and friend MC Zani UK beatbox champion!
Image by Daniel Phung.
