17th May 2023
‘And In The Soil, There Be Mirrors’ is a site-responsive dance film by Hollie Miller and Sam Williams set across a selection of historical locations in the English landscape including Waverley Abbey, Coalhouse Fort, Epping Forest and Asylum Chapel.
The work responds not only to the architecture and former life of these sites but also counteracts a heritage version of the landscape with a Gothic and mythological vision. A series of figures whose traits are drawn from nature and English folklore inhabit the site, possessing a sense of the uncanny and discarding the pastoral, nostalgic images of the countryside that people hold on to.
It features performers Tom Heyes, Jia-Yu Corti, Andrew Downes, Temitope Ajose Cutting and Karen Callaghan and a musical score by Craig Scott. This work was generously supported by Arts Council England, Arts Partnership Surrey and Surrey Hills Arts.
You can watch the trailer here.
Hollie Miller and Sam Williams collaborate to create an intriguing new work with an exceptional cast of performers. Gothic elements, birds of prey, anachronistic costuming, curious moving and disquieting sounds haunt and intervene upon ruins, relationships and a rural idyll. Legacies of British counter-cinema linger and unsettle in this disarming new work.
Joe Moran
Shafts of sunlight cut through ruins, catching the surface of bodies whose sinewy, peeling movements lean and ache into space and ground. Incongruous costuming ‑ an armoured glove and a satin dress, a silky worm and a scaly vest - set an unsettling scene. Pairing a brooding sound score with tense, elongated camera, Miller and Williams have created a compelling film that choreographs a strange asynchronous chorus of human and non-human forces.
Victoria Gray