Wow, March has certainly been a busy month in the world of Ffin Dance – from our premiere performance at Laban right through to Holyhead this past week. It’s been a rollercoaster ride of lots of hard work to pull everything together as well as a good measure of exceptionally fun times bringing us all closer as a company!

One of the challenges of touring is getting used to each new space and having to alter elements of the choreography in accordance with this – as well as keeping things fresh for us as dancers, it also means that each audience is getting a somewhat unique performance of the pieces. Whilst I feel the physical implications of each space in Synapsequence, it’s been lovely to be able to watch Five Dances taking shape in the different spaces where of course there has been the added element of live accompaniment from Platform 4 who occupy alongside the dancers.

At both Laban and the Richard Burton Theatre, the musicians have shared the same stage space as the dancers which has really allowed for human interactions to develop between everybody involved and strengthened the connection between music and choreography. In Merthyr, at Theatr Soar, there was unfortunately not any live music but with the backdrop of a beautiful pipe organ which was so conducive to the musical starting points of the choreography the dancers did not seem at all alone in the space (although they may have felt lonely!) This weekend in Ucheldre, the musicians performed live once again and were situated on a raised stage behind the dancers – the long space gave for an entirely new perspective on the piece.

Another element to the tour has been our outreach workshops alongside performances and it has been really interesting how teaching phrases from Synapsequence has reinforced the material for us as group…not to mention brought up a few anomalies as to individual takes on the material such that we have been able to re-clarify and refine some of our unison sections!

Am already looking forward to returning to Abertillery next month to see what The Met has in store for us with its raked stage!

Effie 🙂
Image Lucille Teppa