Created and Performed by Sarah Hopfinger

Music and Sound Design by Alicia Jane Turner

What do you do when you can’t trust the very body that houses you? When you lose faith in the form we present and the biological machine which gets us from A to B, how do you reclaim that autonomy – particularly in living with chronic pain?

Presented as an amalgam of dance theatre, gorgeously wrapped in original music from Alicia Jane Turner, creator and performer Sarah Hopfinger’s Pain and I is an intimate exploration of her relationship and trials of living with chronic pain. But through an exquisite blending of ritual and autobiographical admission, Hopfinger locates the optimism in what appears to be an endless chasm in distress for the biological form and the psychological betrayals that come associated with it.

The ‘performance’ begins before the doors open for the audience as we are instructed that we need not be ‘polite’ by traditional stage means. Pain and I paves the way for others to follow and adapt by offering volume-lowering headphones, fidget spinners, and additional pieces of material to encourage us to take an example from Hopfinger’s production, to go with the piece at our pace, to care for ourselves and leaves anxious worries of the self-conscious by the door. It’s refreshing and only the first step in what becomes an encouraging piece of accessible work which does not spurn pain but rather seeks to learn from it. It is, after all, a key impulse and communication from the body.  

A voice welcomes us into the Summerhall Tech Cube space, initially detached from the form presented in front of us, which reinforces this duality of it all – the pain and body separate. Naked and exposed, Pain and I detaches from any form of set or prop, and Michaella Fee’s lighting is kept to the simplest of uses to ensure nothing is hidden from us. Every line, crease, and element of Hopfinger is here for us to begin to break down what it means to care for our bodies and one another. 

It’s both a hell and sanctuary, a place where we can be open and free but the sporadic shudders of pain ring throughout as Hopfinger’s movement begins to dissociate from the space surrounding us. Even with the spectral composition from Turner, Hopfinger’s body dances to the song of their innovation. It’s an inspiring rejection of expectation, in that as gorgeous as the music is, it’s not strictly what Hopfinger’s movements correlate to, at least rhythmically, and on purpose. There’s a sense every performance is unique, not only in how audiences react but in what Hopfinger’s body will allow and what ‘feels’ appropriate for that time and space.

What movements Hopfinger taps into this evening captures the claustrophobia of being trapped within themselves, confined, and abandoned – only pain as company. But this isn’t a shrinking into the darkness piece, no there is always hope and even joy as the limbs open themselves to the audience, Hopfinger’s playful nature bounding into the seats, around the space and encircling us in this fluid sense of captivating movement and growing equilibrium.

The spoken elements of Pain & I are where any sense of ‘discernment’ can be extracted – though this isn’t a piece of dance theatre crafted to be unpacked and analysed, more one to be experienced and shared and digested individually. But the writing is elegant and beautiful, spoken with honesty and frankness, almost like a lover they are clashing with. It can be harrowing to hear and confront these discussions of ageing and the self-conscious nature of all things laid bare and raw. But the platform Hopfinger raises is one of compassionate validation.

One of the most intimately personal pieces touring Scotland, Hopfinger brings together unexpected elements of dance theatre to stand apart from the genre in a space with endless possibilities, but with the lacking framework some audiences may search for. It will speak to every person in that audience in different ways; there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s part of the beauty of the entire show. Even those who haven’t experienced (first-hand) chronic pain can appreciate the exquisite music, eloquent spoken word, and the coming together of body and pain to demonstrate the beauty that lingers in these cracks we have, the fragmented elements of us (physical, emotional, spiritual) which we are often pushed to repair or plaster-over.

---