Community
My thoughts on community practice
One of my goals as a dance artist is to work within the community, and to bring dance to people who may not usually have regular access to dance. Teaching is integral to my dance practice, if it weren’t for passionate dance teachers I wouldn’t be where I am today, and teaching classes of my own fuels my fire and excites me just as much as performance can. Care and compassion are my core values in all the work I do, in choreographing, in performing, but especially in work within the community.
Teaching
I have a love for teaching and it is an integral part of my work as a dance artist. I currently teach contemporary dance classes for adults at Studio K in London and for Studio K Online. I enjoy teaching high energy release based classes with a focus on floorwork and I also enjoy facilitating improvisation and contact improvisation.
I have experience teaching contemporary dance workshops for EDGE across the UK and internationally. I also worked for Funky Feet and Urban Moves teaching Street Dance to young people aged 5 - 18 in schools across Dundee City Council.
One of my favourite teaching experiences was working in Familcao with EDGE. Two of my fellow dance company members and I were given the task of choreographing a dance on a group of 30 three-year-olds who only understood Portuguese with a timeline of less than six hours over three days. Seeing the group perform and how proud their parents were to see them up on stage dancing after such a short amount of time was heartwarming, and such an incredible achievement.
For teaching CV click here.
Scottish Ballet - Safe to Be Me
I had the incredible opportunity to work with Scottish Ballet on their Safe to Be Me project. My role was a support dance artist and in a small team we delivered workshops online to schools across Scotland teaching them about Gender Identity through dance, poetry and discussion. This was such a touching project to be a part of and I loved to see how we could engage the children in the topic and hear their heart-warming responses.
Research and Development with Akademi
Throughout January, I have been working with Anusha Subramanyam for Akademi South Asian Dance Company, on research and development for a new children’s show (not yet named), for SEN children and their teachers and carers, due to tour to schools in the near future. This project is very exciting for me as it combines my love for work within the community, my love for working collaboratively, and my love for performing.
Image by Vipul Sangoi
Research into Contact Improvisation
A big part of my practice is researching contact improvisation. As an avid lover of CI I have researched in depth how we experience intimacy when practicing CI. What was interesting to me about what I found out was how different elements of our personal lives and personal backgrounds can affect our perception of intimacy, and in turn affect how we practice CI. This research project also led me to facilitate regular CI sessions which I thoroughly enjoyed - I would love to further develop my facilitation practice. If you are interested in further discussing this research, or viewing a copy of the written artistic inquiry that I compiled you can get in touch with me and I’ll be more than happy to talk and share. I have now shifted my focus slightly to researching care and consent within contact improvisation. I hope to contribute to the CI community by highlighting the issues of care and consent and I aim to work towards creating my own practice which would involve some sort of structure based around consent that can create a safe space and allow people to feel free and liberated by the intimacy involved with touch and proximity in CI.
For further information on my CI research please get in contact.