Performing Place: A Conversation with Sioned Huws

Invited by the Nottingham based international centre Dance4 I recently took part in an online conversation with choreographer and performer Sioned Huws. Originally from Bangor in north Wales, Sioned has been working for a number of years with community groups in northern Japan, helping to record, preserve and promote traditional forms of dance, such as the Kakinaizawa Shishi-odori (deer dance), which was the focus of our discussion here. The conversation also touched on ideas of place-making as a performative process, as well as the broader notion of what constitutes a ‘new’ dance in our current age of recirculation.

In the second installment of the interview we also get to see more of the interior of the house in the forest where Sioned was living during the ‘Deer Dance’ project, built by a local carpenter using traditional Japanese joinery techniques, i.e. without additional fixings such as screws, nails or glue.

Link to Dance4 website: A Conversation Place