DIY Nights - Beginning

About the Night:

A double-bill of performances by Sarah White and Kait Dron, followed by an in-conversation with Claire Henderson Davis.

Kait and Sarah have developed two new works in-progress for this evening’s sharing. Their practices intersect through a shared holding of movement research and theological study, both attending to drawing, dance and close reading of poetic and scriptural texts to give birth to performance. These texts are kneaded like dough and chewed over in the mouth, making faith strange. Performance becomes a site of divine invocation and dialogue; an intimate, vulnerable and heightened encounter, exploring desire, liberation, faith and doubt. Performance becomes a prayerful utterance, and a transformative event, with its roots embedded in the event of incarnation.

Read here an article written by the artists on each other’s previous work: https://artandchristianity.org/news/white-dron

Doors: 6.30
Performances start: 6.45

PERFORMANCES:

EPILOGUE (AFTER THOUGHT), by Sarah White (20 mins)
Sarah’s practice draws on processes of imitation and transformation. Collecting within herself the movements and words of others, she stretches herself between multiple selves, pulled between belief and disbelief. In this stripped back work, improvisation is a site of prayer, moving through and with the words of others who are teetering on the brink of belief. Their words become consumed, churned over, and reconstituted.

This performance uses text from two books: Transgressive Devotion: Theology as Performance Art, by Natalie Wigg-Stevenson, and There is a Miracle in Your Mouth - due out with Tenement Press/ No University Press (date tbc 2026), by Kate Pickering. The performance also references the writing of Karen O’Donnell in the book The Dark Womb.

“Wild and wonderful”

STAG WOUND, by Kait Dron (25 mins)
In this new Butoh piece, Kait Dron looks towards the metamorphosis and transfiguration of wounding. Semi-improvisational, guttural and evocative - what is it to commit to being wedded to reality? Drawing from The Song of Songs and William Blake's Jerusalem, The Emanation of The Giant Albion, we follow the journey of the Bride into the luminous primordial darkness and witness her transfiguration through encounter.

"Mystical and incredibly original. I've never seen anything like it."
"Seamless beauty"

About the Artists:

SARAH WHITE is a London based interdisciplinary artist working across somatic movement practices, performance, writing and installation. Her research thinks with, beside and between movement research and faith practices, exploring the feedback loops and accumulative dialogues between them. Recent public performances have been programmed by Future Ritual, Nomas* Projects for Art Night Dundee, Religion and Art Live, the Goethe Institut, Royal College of Art, Society for the Study of Theology, Koppel Project and The Swiss Church. Sarah is the Residency Director for Morphe Arts London, and Editor of the online Agnoscis Journal.

sarahwhite.org.uk / @sarah_white16

KAIT DRON is a dance artist trained in Butoh, creating with landscape, image and word. She has studied with influential teachers including Seiji Tanaka, Atsushi Takenouchi, Yumiko Yoshioka, and Imre Thormann and is deeply informed by land-based movement, textual arts, and mythic narratives, exploring the intersection of body, imagination, spirit and landscape. After a 10-year career in the fashion industry, Kait moved into dance and has recently completed the MA Creative Practice: Dance Professional programme at Trinity Laban, London, on a Leverhulme Scholarship. Through Butoh, landscape immersion and literary study, she contemplates body as medium and sign, theophany and gift. She views the body as poetic utterance, engaging in dialogue with the living world and teaches weekly Butoh classes in Totnes.]

being.land 

CLAIRE HENDERSON DAVIS is a performance artist, theologian and Gestalt therapist. Her work, in all its forms, explores the nature of human flourishing. Her performance work brings together artists from different fields, often involving collaboration between professionals and non-professionals. She is particularly interested in how we inhabit our bodies in the everyday, and her work focuses on developing new forms of participation and audience engagement. As a theologian, Claire is rooted in the Christian tradition while working to articulate a vision of God that redresses the imbalance of Christianity in relation to the divine feminine and sexuality. Her current project, under development with sculptor Caroline Mackenzie, is an exploration of the Divine Feminine in Christianity.

clairehendersondavis.com

Accessibility:

Please note, we are on the second floor of a warehouse building, accessed by a staircase only. We regret that we cannot currently adequately support wheelchair users and those for whom stairs are a barrier.

We are committed to removing other barriers to access. If you would like to talk to us about your access needs, please contact: frances@chisenhaledancespace.co.uk. Read more about our commitments to anti-ableism as part of our Artist Community Culture Document

About DIY Nights:

DIY Nights are CDS’s performance programme created in the spirit of grassroots, low stakes performance making and sharing.

Anyone can apply to run a DIY Night, and CDS programmes them on a rolling basis for artists looking for a way to try out new ideas with low financial risk.

If you are interested in running your own night, you can learn more and apply here.