Research and creative practice grounded in somatic dance: embodied awareness, felt sense and becoming. I work with embodied feeling states and a heightened sense of presence in the here and now - playing within the flows and densities of body and space. Mediating inner and outer forces, I seek possibilities of frankness, desire, innocence, gentleness and freedom.
Showings of my work include: TAP Arts Southend; Lanchester Gallery, Coventry; Divus, London; Summer Dancing Coventry; National Gallery of Modern Art, Prague; Kyoto Arts Centre, Japan; Art Claims Impulse, Berlin; Czech Centre, London; NoD Prague; Tanec Praha Prague; Preview Berlin Art Fair; Futura Gallery, Prague; Prague Castle; Jiri Svestka Gallery Prague; British Counci, Prague; Geothe Institute Prague; The Place London; Hackney Empire. Artist and Research Residencies include: British Council Prague; TAP Arts Southend; HAMU Academy of Arts Prague; Futura/Cimelice Czechia; Summer Dancing Coventry; Art Claims Impulse Berlin; Futura Gallery Prague; Jacobs Pillow; Geothe Institute Prague.
performance and collaborations with
Oreet Ashery; Dog Kennel Hill Project; Anthony Gormley; Michael Klien; Rosemary Lee; Florence Peake; Amalia Pica; Carolyn Roy; Tino Sehgal; Stefan Jovanovic; Adam James; Ricochet Dance Productions; Jan Pusch; Wally Cardona; Darlene Stevens; Susanna Szperling; Patricia Woltmann; Margarita Zafrilla-Olayo.
Tate Modern; Wellcome Collection; Hayward Gallery; Whitechapel Gallery; Bosse & Baum; Space Studios; Benaki Museum, Athens; MACRO Rome; Jerwood Gallery; RICE on Hydra; national mid-scale touring and Dance Umbrella Festival UK.
teaching
Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT) and creative somatic practice: professional dancers and performers, dance conservatoires and universities, community, and arts-and-health.
My teaching develops technical states of embodied availability and presence and creative somatic process to foster freedom and autonomy. I aim to cultivate states of aliveness and trust, through which to interact sensitively, creatively and spontaneously with our world.
writing and broadcast
On dance, art, embodiment and somatics within both academic and journalistic contexts.
Chapters published in Secretly Alive: Embodied Perspectives on Dance Improvisation (Ed. Rais, Eliasova, Le Quesne, NAMU, 2024); Skinner Releasing Technique (Ed. Emslie, Triarchy Press 2020), Attending To Movement: Somatics in a Wider Field (Ed. Garret-Brown, Whatley, Alexander, Triarchy Press 2015).
Book: Secretly Alive: Embodied Perspectives on Dance Improvisation (Ed., with Rais and Eliasova, NAMU 2024).
education - training - qualifications
- Practice-based PhD 2021-2025 “Feeling and Becoming: Towards a Post-Somatic Dance”
Coventry University, Centre for Dance Research. Funded: M4C Scholarship, AHRC UK
- MA by Research 2020-2021
Coventry University, Centre for Dance Research - Funded: M4C Scholarship, AHRC UK
-Somatic movement and embodied therapeutic practices 1996 - present
Alexander Technique; Authentic Movement; Bodynamics; Body Mind Centring; Continuum; Experiential Anatomy; Feldenkrais; Improvisation; Kundalini Yoga; Mindfulness Meditation; Qi Gong; Realization Process; Scaravelli yoga; Skinner Releasing Technique; embodied trauma therapies.
- Somatic Dance Movement Therapy 2018-2020
Moving Soma UK - scholarship
- SRT Teacher Certification 2010-2011
Skinner Releasing Institute - support from Dance UK and Lisa Ullman Travelling Fund
- MA Dance - Choreography, Choreology, Aesthetics 1996-1998
Laban Centre London (now Trinity Laban Conservatoire for Music and Dance)
- BA Visual Art and Dance 1987- 1990
Brighton Polytechnic (now University of Brighton)
- Foundation Art 1986-1987
Shrewsbury College of Art
- Hammond School of Dance, Chester 1979-1982
based
Born Australia, grew up in UK. Early 1990s and 2000s lived and worked in Prague (British Council Artist in Residence at HAMU - Prague Academy of Performing Arts; and Guest Teacher at Duncan Centre Conservatoire of Modern Dance). Currently based in London and working throughout Europe and beyond.