Skywater, Facewater, Underwater Waltz will premiere at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, in September 2025, and as part of the final development and completion of work, we spent a week at Lancaster Arts in July 2025 as part of their Moving Sideways residency programme. The work is being made and performed by Karen Christopher, Tara Fatehi and Jemima Yong – and for this residency we were joined by our lighting designer Marty Langthorne, who was supported by Lancaster Arts’ Technician John Newman-Holden.
A video shot on Karen’s phone of Jemima and Marty working (with assistance from John on the Genie lift) on light reflections in a bowl of water provoked an idea about how to talk about our work – the time and space and equipment and technicians to create this moment is no small thing.
Over the course of working on Skywater, Facewater, Underwater Waltz, we had spent hours with flashlights and reading lights and sunshine through a window, but none of these did for us what access to proper lighting equipment and expert assistance did for Jemima’s idea of catching light through this bowl of water.
In our performance we make use of three large, clear, round bowls of water; small oceans we carry around with us. Activating visualisations of both miniaturisation and the vast depths of wide seas serves as an attempt to find a human place between the massive scale shifts to be found in the oceans of the world. The evocation of these massive swings in size is all we really have to attempt to impress upon ourselves how we are very much out of our depth in understanding the magnitude of oceans and their effect on the planet. The chemistry, the travel, the weather, the power, the life sustaining nutrients, the salt of the Earth, the magic of phosphorescence, the ingenuity of the octopus, the cooperation of shoals of fish, the partnership of the clown fish and the anemone, the intricate cityscape of coral reefs, all overwhelm our understanding or our grasp.
This moment of working on light reflecting off and through water is emblematic of the clarity of focus we were able to employ during our four days at Lancaster Arts. The piece expands in depth and in scope and detail with the lighting. The way the props shine, come to life, with everything gelled together to make an environment.
The work of artists is play. Sometimes this looks like the opposite of work but one doesn’t dream everything in the mind. Contact with others and with materials, equipment, and simply trying things out in real time combine with our own body weather to create a space for opportunity.
Photo above by Darren Andrews
