Three questions with SAY: the boundary-breaking dance duo behind the album
Presented as part of undisciplined festival 2023, the album by SAY invites us to experience the energy of a music gig through boundary-breaking contemporary dance. Created by award-winning artists Sarah Golding and Yuk Masui, the album is a mixture of music, personal stories and dance.
Ahead of their performance at The Old Market on Tuesday 7 March, we asked Sarah and Yukiko three questions...
‘We made the album to remind ourselves and others that we should dance how we want and to the music that inspires us unapologetically.’
South East Dance: Tell us about yourselves and why you formed SAY?
Sarah and Yukiko: 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"!
South East Dance: What inspired you to create the album?
Sarah and Yukiko: 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.
South East Dance: What do you hope audiences will experience?
Sarah and Yukiko: 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.
Book tickets to the album here.