BIO
I am a London based teacher, facilitator, performer, director, choreographer and consultant.
My professional training began twenty years ago with BA in Circus from the National Centre for Circus Arts (fka The Circus Space) followed by a Lecoq pedagogy in theatre-making at LISPA (London International School of Performing Arts - now arthaus Berlin). After a decent chunk of time navigating the collaborative and devised worlds of dance, circus, theatre and all things cross-disciplinary, I began developing my own practice as a researcher, writer and choreographer, completing a Masters degree in Choreography with Distinction from Trinity Laban Conservatoire in 2019.
I was a founder member and joint artistic director of storytelling-theatre company You Need Me, and founder member and associate director of circus-theatre company Square Peg. My early career was spent generating and touring shows throughout the UK with these two companies. This was made possible with the support of Arts Council England, Ideas Tap, Unity Theatre Trust, Bristol Old Vic, Newbury Corn Exchange, Jacksons Lane, Shoreditch Town Hall, The National Centre for Circus Arts, the Roundhouse and the National Theatre.
In 2020 I was commissioned by the wonderful community arts and cultural organisation St. Margaret's House to contribute to their online engagement program, REACH. In the summer of 2020 I developed and delivered a program of online dance improvisation courses for the general public, performance professionals and carers' networks across Lewisham and Tower Hamlets. This culminated in an utterly glorious video-dance piece which is still warming my cockles six months on. Titled AUGUST 2020 (Draft One), you can see the work, choreographed by myself and made in collaboration with videographer and photographer Enrico Policardo, via instagram here.
Directing roles include Sophie Page Hall's, Out of Darkness; Out of Order's, Once Standing; and Nikki and JD's Knot, winner of 2019 Total Theatre Awards, part of the 2019 British Council Showcase and still touring internationally. In 2021 r&d began on Natalie Reckert's new show Stones and Water (working title) in collaboration with Tina Koch (Ockham's Razor). I also direct and choreograph private and public participatory community events, and interventions. In 2019 I was invited by Little Gay Brother to create a sensual immersive experience with and for clubbers, on stage and on the dance floor at London's most (in)famous club, Fabric. In 2022 I collaborated with artists at Hidden Rung, to create a sensual, immersive and participatory intervention, curated especially for an exclusive private event in Central London; hosts and guests, artists and collectors, performers and audience all shared in the blurring of performance, workshop, rave and ritual. In 2024 I was excited and honoured to be invited to collaborate with the giant of all environmental campaigners, Greenpeace, working as movement director on a brave and disruptive creative campaign and public action, in response to Shell's profit announcement, and their ongoing social and climate devastation, negligence, profiteering and greenwashing.
Prior to Covid I collaborated in the devising and performance of Seed with Circumference. I am also an ongoing member of the cast-on-rotation for choreographer Janine Harrington's #ScreenSaverSeries, with fond memories of slipping, sliding and climbing all over each other in pre-pandemic performances at the Wellcome Collection London, as part of the Festival of Minds and Bodies, November 2019.
I am generally busy trying to create the world I would like to live in and put my energies into creating and nurturing community. I conceived and for three years also facilitated The Circus Director's and Choreographer's Afternoon Tea, a community building, sector developing, peer support event, hosted annually by, and with the support of, Jackson's Lane.
I am a certified Feldenkrais® practitioner with Instituto Feldenkrais de España and the Feldenkrais Method® runs through all my creative practices; life, work, self-care, teaching, training and relationships.
Like Feldenkrais, my creative process is based on framing an inquiry and then creating the conditions in which we can then safely, comfortably and consciously follow curiosity and pleasure. I return time and again to concepts of the body/self, and the body in society, the environment and our relationship to our world around us: nature, empathy, ritual and community.
My practice celebrates, legitimates and perpetuates the flattening of hierarchies and the structuring of participatory systems which enable, promote and develop agency and equality whilst celebrating difference.
As a freelance teacher I move between the creative and the functional/technical and teach courses to general public and private classes, as well as teaching in a number higher education environments and dance, drama and circus conservatoires. I teach theatre, physical theatre and devising, movement analysis and improvisation, creation for circus, dramaturgy and choreographic practices. As well as being a fully qualified Feldenkrais® practitioner, I am also certified as a Body Control Pilates teacher. I offer classes and workshops for all levels and environments, specialising in or combining different areas of expertise as required. See Classes and Workshops for further information.