Award-winning research and performance practice in somatic dance: spatiality, affect and becoming. I work with embodied feeling states, compassion, presence and the ethics of becoming - within the flows and densities of body and space. Mediating inner and outer forces, I seek possibilities of frankness, desire, gentleness and power within relational frames.
St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace, London; TAP Arts Southend; Coventry University; Divus, London; Siobhan Davies Studios, London; Wilkinson Gallery London; National Gallery of Modern Art, Prague; Kyoto Arts Centre, Japan; Art Claims Impulse, Berlin; Czech Centre, London; NoD Prague; Tanec Praha Prague; Preview Berlin; Futura Gallery, Prague; Prague Castle; Jiri Svestka Gallery Prague; British Counci, Prague; Geothe Institute Prague; The Place London; Hackney Empire.
Residencies include: British Council Prague; TAP Arts Southend; HAMU Academy of Performing Arts Prague; Futura-Cimelice Czechia; Art Claims Impulse Berlin; Futura Gallery Prague; Jacobs Pillow USA; Geothe Institute Prague.
performance and collaborations
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 states of empowerment and autonomy. I aim to cultivate states of aliveness and trust, through which to become present in and interact creatively and spontaneously with our world.
research, writing and broadcast
On dance, art, embodiment and somatics in academia and journalism.
Book: Secretly Alive: Embodied Perspectives on Dance Improvisation (Ed., with Rais and Eliasova, NAMU 2024).
Book 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).
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 Skinner Releasing Technique and the Autonomic Nervous System
Coventry University, Centre for Dance Research
Funded: M4C Scholarship, AHRC UK
Somatic movement and 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 (UK and USA); Somatic Dance Movement Therapy
SRT Teacher Certification 2010-2011
Skinner Releasing Institute, Coventry UK - funding: Dance UK and Lisa Ullman Travelling Fund
MA Dance Studies - 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
based
Born Australia, grew up in UK. Early 1990s and 2000s lived and worked in Prague (Lecturer/Artist in Residence at HAMU Academy of Performing Arts; and Guest Teacher at Duncan Centre Conservatoire of Modern Dance). Currently based in London and working internationally