8 Tender Solitudes

2021 - Present

A short dance film made during the third UK lockdown in early 2021, evoking what we lost when we were no longer able to touch.

8 Tender Solitudes was created in collaboration with seven extraordinary dancers, each performing alone. Featuring a soaring score by composer Kate Whitley, it’s made from yearning and sensuality, anger and frustration, grief, memory and love.

Since early 2021, we’ve had to learn new ways to connect with our friends and our loved ones. We’ve met each other at a distance, but rarely skin to skin. We’ve become fearful of breath, hugging and intimacy, and we’ve thought we might never be touched again.

When we’ve lived like this for so long, can touch ever be the same?

Can touch ever be the same?

"Stunning. Global, trans-age, dancing digits that evoked the emptiness and pain so felt by all from the loss of intimacy…"

anonymous viewer

8 Tender Solitudes by Fevered Sleep, 2021

Meet the team

Choreography, Direction, Editing:
David Harradine & Sam Butler
Composition: Kate Whitley
Musicians: 12 Ensemble

Dancers: 
Benedicta Valentina Mamuini
Elise Norgate
Hugh Stanier
Jasmine Chiu
Karen Callaghan
Keiana Wolfe
Nathan Goodman

Online editor: Adam Lewis
Film Consultant: Fergus Dingle
First Assistant Director: Louisa Borg-Costanzi Potts
Line Producer: Amy Davies Dolamore