Creating work as part of our Young Curators’ Programme, Bethany Holloway is a musician versed in sound technology, production and mixing. Her new project DJ, a collaborative experiment with dancer Shirani Brook, will be premiered at hcmf// 2021. It explores the synchronization of sound and movement, and the ways we fall into dance when listening to music. Ahead of the concert, we caught up with Bethany to discuss her influences, and the process of putting her composed music up for interpretation.
DJ stems from your experience mixing and putting on music events. Was there a direct link from that side of your music to this piece?
My piece explores the relationship between music and movement – a relationship that is very prominent at all raves, club nights and music events. The dancers and the punters interact with the music and use their body to manipulate the rhythms and musical ideas found in the music. Before I chose to pursue music, I was equally passionate about dance. I’ve always been interested in how music and dance relate to one another, how the music makes people move and the movement can influence the music. As I’ve started DJing and putting on my own events I’ve learnt more about the DJ’s influence on the dance. In this piece the DJ will share control with the dancer – her movement will influence, interpret and manipulate how I interact with the music as the DJ.
Can you tell us a little about the process of the piece?
I knew I wanted to explore movement and music, but the development of this idea took a few turns. Initially there were so many different ways that we could have made this piece come to life. I had to really explore and trial these ideas before coming up with what we have now. I composed the music, I worked with pieces of spoken word from Kamila Bookless, and then myself and Shirani Brook choreographed the dance together. This piece is definitely a collaboration of lots of peoples talents and creative output.
What about club music did you want to capture in the piece, and how did creating this space for it work?
I would say that the music is directly inspired from the music that I enjoy listening to at music events and raves. I tried to capture an essence of bass music, drawing on influences from UK dubstep, UK garage, grime and even trap, hip hop, afro beats and drill. But by the end of the compositional process, I couldn’t help but inject my own soulful, gentle and ambient style into the piece. This has resulted in a good variety of fluidity and strength in the music and movement.
The piece centers a dance performance by Shirani Brook, and there’s a sort of back-and-forth interplay between your music and her movement. How did you both find collaborating, and responding to each other’s artwork?
Personally I absolutely loved working with Shirani. During the residency the piece came to life. Seeing the music and the movement come together, interact with each other and compliment each other, was just amazing for us both to see. The residency was intense and a lot of hard work – but it’s so much fun to work with one of your best friends on something that I have been preparing for over two years now.
With DJ you were initially emphasising the role of the dancer, and even referred to the acronym as ‘Dance Jockey’. Is there a sense for you that there can be a reversal of the ways these two artforms interact, that dancing can sway the movement of music?
Yes, initially the dancer was going to be demonstrating much more control over the music, but actually demonstrating the roles of both the DJ and the dancer allowed us to really explore the interchangeability of both performers. The way that both the music and movement interact with each other can change the whole feeling of the piece. The music can either compliment the movement or juxtapose it and vice versa. We’ve been able to explore different emotions, different styles of dance and numerous ways to emphasise the artforms, to hopefully create a really interesting and engaging performance that demonstrates a blur between DJ and dancer.
Have you been surprised by the direction the project took at all? Did you find you both found harmony between the music and movement, or were there any interesting divergences between the two?
Not particularly. We both came to the residency with a pretty empty mind so we could both be inspired by the creative juices that were flowing in that moment. I did have a vague idea of what I wanted the dance to look like but I didn’t want to hinder any natural creativity or inspiration that would occur in the residency by having too many preconceptions of the final product. Some sections of the composition were harder to choreograph to than others but nothing that watching ten minutes of dance videos for inspiration couldn’t overcome.
DJ makes use of pre-records of your music – I’m wondering what we can expect from the music you’ve been making.
The full performance is an accumulation of six tracks that explore different musical styles and emotional intentions. I’ve explored moments of high intensity and moments of near silence. I’ve explored the use of voice and I’ve been really lucky to work with some amazing pieces of spoken word to manipulate and incorporate. The music will definitely take you on a rollercoaster of energy and emotion – but I hope there will be something for everyone to enjoy, or at least understand.