Dancing in Tongues, Performing the (Un) Believable. Thinking Between Dance and Faith / Sarah White (2025)

Dancing in Tongues, Performing the (Un) Believable was a year-long Practice-asResearch project carried out by Sarah White for the MFA Creative Practice: Dance Professional, at Trinity Laban. The research culminated in a forty-minute performance entitled I Remember (You) Changing1 , and this written dissertation. The performance took place in the Studio Theatre at Laban on 22 July 2025 and consisted of solo dance by Sarah White and live singing accompaniment by Donna Matthews, Jack Noutch and Kate Ryan. The project explored the ways somatic movement and performance can think with, beside and between theology and faith. And how the feedback loop and accumulative dialogue between these processes can give birth to choreographic practice and performance, and to thinking about belief and disbelief. At the foreground of the research was attention to collaboration, dialogue and storytelling as strategies for thinking with others, and reaching out beyond one’s individual perception. The direction of the research was towards movements of communication, empathy, imitation and transformation. Dancing in Tongues built upon Sarah’s sixteen years of creative practice. The research refined her language and perception of the potential of performance as a relational moment of moving towards one another, in deepening presence and intimacy.