Move With The Greats – Sasha Shuttleworth
Gallery / 8 images
Over the past three weeks, we have been spotlighting photographers who were selected from our open call with BACARDÍ. First was Alec Jafrato’s portraits of a Northern Soul night, and then the focus shifted to Cebo Luthuli’s images from inside an Amapiano club night. Now it’s the turn of the final winner, Sasha Shuttleworth. Embracing the rum brand’s Move With Greats campaign, all three photographers were set with the task of documenting how different generations find community through movement on the same dancefloor.
For her commission, Shuttleworth turned her lens on Elody, a grassroots party held at Rainy Heart in Stretford, South Manchester. Brighton-born and Manchester-based, Shuttleworth works as a documentary photographer, radio presenter and writer, with a practice grounded in “joy, love, grace and integrity in the human and natural worlds.” Her approach was led by patience and intuition. “The camera allows me to show how moved I am, constantly by the world around me,” she explains, “I am not so interested in controlling every element of an image, but rather finding a way to wait for the moment to emerge between myself and the subject. Really, I am trying to hold something in place before life moves on again.”
For Shuttleworth, whose ongoing project Together On The Floor documents grassroots nightlife in Manchester, the appeal of documenting shared dancefloors is in honouring how these spaces continue to foster connection in difficult times. While her images capture a different energy, similar to the other stories, the images show the joy of individuals dancing with their BACARDÍ & Coca-Cola drinks in hand.
Below, Shuttleworth talks us through the night, her ongoing project Together On The Floor, photographing the event and more.
What initially pushed you to pursue photography?
Sasha Shuttleworth: I started shooting film on my dad’s old camera because digital SLRs were way out of my price range. When I started, you could buy all your film from the 99p shop. I came to photography by accident. After spending my youth painting, writing, and drawing, I experienced a period of disconnection in my teens from the passion I had always had for the world. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t think straight. I picked up a camera at sixteen, initially with the idea of taking some photos to compose a painting, and felt something shift. All that obsession I had with learning about the world around me, all the restless desire I had for life came flooding back in, and I haven’t looked back since.
Can you tell us about the night you photographed for the ‘Move With The Greats’ commission?
Sasha Shuttleworth: I chose Elody for this commission: a party based in Rainy Heart, Stretford, South Manchester, and run by excellent, eclectic selectors Shade Dean-Alegre and Theo Ward. It also happens to be the current home of Steam Radio; the community radio station which I help run, so a venue I am very familiar with. I chose Elody for their dedication to the dance floor they create, the glowing, ecstatic atmosphere they evoke in their crowds, and the reverence they show for the party starters who have come before them.
Why was this particular event important for you to document?
Sasha Shuttleworth: My dancefloor project ‘Together On The Floor’ is about grassroots nightlife. Local nights put on by people who live and work in the community. For this event, Mr Scruff, who has done much to support grassroots venues, was the headliner. I knew that along with Elody, this would bring a wide mix of ages, local residents, students, artists, fans of the DJ’s, and people who would have just stumbled upon the night by accident by following the sound of the music. That is exactly what I wanted to capture for this campaign.
Times are so hard; our people are struggling in this country. Traumatised by austerity, reeling from a pandemic, told every day that connection is harder than ever to find. I wanted to show that on a Friday night in a small venue in South Manchester, as in hundreds of small venues across the country, generations come together through the embodied experience of sharing a dancefloor. That in doing so, they are finding a way towards one another, if only for a few hours.
What stood out to you about the energy on the dancefloor?
Sasha Shuttleworth: What stood out for me was how this dancefloor seemed to contain everything I have ever looked for in a dancefloor – I felt very lucky. It was a playful, joyful, cathartic space. The energy flowed steadily from opening hour anticipation, to a high hum of conversation as people began to relax and different groups and ages started to dance together, to a peak of complete communion. I saw so many smiling faces, so many people chatting to strangers, or dancing alone, lost in their own experience. I heard a lot of laughter, flirtation, and joy. I saw people close their eyes and tilt their heads up to feel the light of the disco ball.
“Young people are constantly being pushed into commodifying their every experiences where they should feel at their most embodied. I think older generations light the way in showing young people that this is their right as human beings to not let anything stop them from moving freely,” – Sasha Shuttleworth
This campaign celebrates intergenerational dance spaces. What did you notice about how different generations moved, connected, or shared the space?
Sasha Shuttleworth: I noticed it felt markedly more relaxed than many dancefloors I have covered, which were less intergenerational. I think club dancefloors follow the same energetic logic of house parties in that the more diverse the age range, the more people can be themselves without fear of comparison. Intergenerational spaces set the groundwork for a more fun, interesting atmosphere.
At the start of the night, I noticed a strong connection between the youngest and oldest dancers in the room, who seemed most to share the desire to just dance. People arrived in groups of friends and couples, ranging in age from their early twenties to their late sixties. Every young person I spoke to said they were happy to be sharing the space with older dancers. Hal, Ruben and Eve, three students aged 22 and 23, said to me, ‘Walking into a space like this, that’s intergenerational, just feels so much better, we are looking for them.’
What do you think younger dancers can learn from older generations when it comes to moving freely?
Sasha Shuttleworth: It’s about just learning to fully be there. Being present in that room, letting everything else go and being where you are. Young people are constantly being pushed into commodifying their every experience and into being taken out of these moments where they should feel at their most embodied. They have the right to those moments in their lives, to these spaces that are as playful as they are reverent, where you are connected simultaneously to your highest and most base animal self. I think older generations light the way in showing young people that this is their right as human beings to experience this, to not let anything stop them from moving freely.
Is there one image from the night that best captures what ‘moving freely’ means to you, and why?
Sasha Shuttleworth: This was hard, but I had to choose the portrait I made with Simon Hepburn. I have been photographing dancefloors in Manchester for the past three years and have been lucky enough to photograph Simon a few times now. I first noticed him dancing at NOSSA back in 2023 and have found him time and again in my work, dancing beautifully by himself, or with friends by the sound system, or sometimes, if it gets too crowded, right at the edge of the dancefloor where he has space to move. DJ’s are always excited to see him arrive. I think of him as a quality barometer; if Simon’s there, the music is going to be good.
You titled your series ‘Together On The Floor’. Where did that come from, and what does that phrase mean to you in the context of the night you captured for this campaign?
Sasha Shuttleworth: The title ‘Together On The Floor’ was born out of a body of work I have been working on since 2023, which attempts to express the dissociating rage, tragedy, and moments of pure grace involved in life under austerity, and the cumulative effect of successive funding cuts to public life. At the time, I had just been made redundant, and was having to work three or four zero-hour jobs and sign on just to cover my rent each month. I had started photographing grassroots dancefloors and was taken aback by how far they seemed to embody this grace I was attempting to write about.
It was a hard winter, and I was often working all day and all night, catching night buses home through central Manchester. This inspired me to write the poem ‘In The Heart Of The Recession’, which was then set to music by Kaylon as an attempt to describe what I was seeing in the UK. The title ‘Together on The Floor’ does not appear in the poem, but the idea was honed through it. I knew there was something of deep value here in these images. They were capturing the dignity, resilience and power of these people who, like generations before them, found the ability, despite all the challenges they faced, to come out and dance.
Dancers flock to Elody’s events to have fun, to be together, to move freely to incredible music. I believe that seeing people of all ages cling to each other in their best dress under a mirrorball. Outside the United Kingdom, the ever-increasing cost of living and political turmoil are evidence of people’s tenacity in demanding the right to fully experience their embodied physical lives. My work presents the coming together of people on a dance floor as a sacred activity and invites viewers to see it, too.
Head to the gallery above to check out Shuttleworth’s images.
