This dance documentary film follows Blue Wave, a performance staged on Roker beach as one of two phases of a project co-created by Co/Lab Sunderland with women from FODI (Friends of the Drop-In for Asylum Seekers and Refugees) and Sangini, a multicultural women’s arts organisation, choreographed and led by artist Constance Humphries. I filmed it on a cloudy but warm Saturday morning, working as a Sunderland filmmaker on a coastline I keep coming back to.

Filming a Dance Documentary Without a Script or Fixed Marks

There were no set positions for the dancers, and no way to know in advance exactly where the performance would move across that stretch of sand. I worked with two GH6s, one locked off wide to hold the whole scene, and a second on a zoom lens that I used to pick out individual dancers as the piece moved. It meant reacting rather than planning, following where the group actually went rather than where I’d guessed they might.

Roker beach was busy that morning, in the way any public beach is on a Saturday, dog walkers, families, joggers, a few tourists. All of them stopped to watch, the whole beach falling quiet except for the sea.

Light, Wind and a Rainbow

The light that morning was genuinely beautiful, soft and shifting under cloud, and partway through a rainbow appeared over the sea behind the dancers. The wind was strong enough that the sound of the sea barely registered on camera, so I added a gentle, atmospheric composition of my own afterwards rather than relying on the on-location audio.

Constance Humphries and the Wider Blue Wave Project

Constance Humphries was an extraordinary presence to film, and the energy the whole group of dancers brought to a windswept beach on an ordinary Saturday morning is something I still think about. Blue Wave ran across 2021 to 2023 as part of Co/Lab Sunderland’s wider Sea AiR programme, drawing on what participants could see, hear and feel at the coast, and on their own relationship with it, expressed through movement. A later phase, expanded with further Arts Council England funding and support from the National Trust, went on to include dancer Tracey West and performed at Tall Ships Hartlepool.

As a Sunderland filmmaker, I’d happily make more work like this. If you’d like to see more of my work filming artists and creative residencies, you can explore my Artists & Culture work.