DANCE

My:

dance is:

a frictional romance between movement,

conversation, choreographic and improvisational

scores. a lucid, cellular, responsive, conversational

dreaming with the world. an ongoing shedding to origin,

to non-justifiable, co-existent acts of bliss,

resistance

and surrender. Body as a cellular interface, in a

colliding, unfolding embrace.

By:

foraging, fermenting and distilling 'forms' of

outsiderness/otherness which abide within us all; a

manifold, abundant and fertile resource, habitats

unfold where we loose

part of our recognisable/surface selves. Reconfiguring

our sense of being through regenerative forces of

fallibility, and encountering something/someone

stranger, and more deeply familiar. Navigating the

margins between life and art, and all things held apart-

channelling delicate anti segregative forces between

polarity and paradox.

Through

perceptually specific and responsive choreographies my

dance inhabits questions of:

living-

including dying,

thought-

including feeling, emotion- sensation,

humanity

entwined with the animal and divine,

love

including the polarities of survival,

and

the intimacies implicitly present between personal and

political realms.

EXPERIENCE/CHILDHOOD/MOTHERHOOD

Dreaming my way through

a childhood in Wales during 70s and 80s- an activity which seemed real- and I could believe in.

I remember hideouts in parks and lanes, in our garden and dusty upside down chaotic and quiet house…away from the news, school, the harsh inequalities of race and class…as a lone child in an era of overt racism my spirt endured through dancing alone at the edge of the playground with the wind, sunlight and shadows. At school I appeared briefly on stage- as an exotic Egyptian dancer in The Happy Prince and Mary Magdalene on Passion Sunday. As an introverted teenager I found other dimensions to life- dancing at Clwb-Ivor-Bach and in my room to Hip-Hop and Guns N’ Roses.

I wasn't raised to value art as a way to live….yet somehow it revealed itself almost as an accidental condition for life to exist.

affinity with otherness has formed deep allegiances and asymmetrical empathies with those who experience marginalisation by other means. As a mother with pricked ears and sensitivities, both inward and out, I am aware of how we inherit our roles, often unconsciously, both as victims and perpetrators of prejudice. Our identification of, our fear of otherness, our reactions, mechanisms and instincts for self preservation and survival are learnt behaviour- fastidiously instilled through shame and fear of not belonging.

am resistant to branding or categorising my work in terms of gender, class, race, disability, neuro-diversity- to be free to manoeuvre outside the designated and appropriated tick boxes. Resonance of curiosity and cellular questioning are how I orientate with myself and audience…and yet my relationship to all of these classifications of identity are at play navigating my experience of the world.

My fidelity lies with Outsiderness and Otherness- not operating through solidarity but through fluidity and rigorous curiosity.

TRAINING/WORK

I Studied

Anthropology followed by Fine Art in Belfast. In a eureka realisation my work was choreography on paper, I trained in Dance at Rubicon in Cardiff, then Performance Writing at Dartington College of Arts. My first solo performance was House Fly at Experimentica in Chapter. From that time I have been making numerous solos as well as curating 3 platforms of dance and live art at Chapter which toured internationally bringing artists together from Wales, Peru, Japan, Korea and France.

continuing in a haberdashery of training including Butoh, Capoeira, Ballet, Body Mind Centring- technique has functioned as a utilitarian displacement of familiarity, steering me to reorientate and reconnect realms of thought, sensation and imagination.

I was commissioned by Chapter to make Exotica…researching the Orissa dance of Brazil/West Africa and pagan beliefs on Greek Islands of human-animal apparitions. This led on to Animal Love Project an artists platform which I curated and performed in , Amongst other things this led to pilgrimage and performances in Peru. My Solo Bear the Wanderer was chosen by British Council for New Moves Festival in France. I curated and performed in Heavenly Love and Future of Love Project bringing together International and Wales based artists. My work was often performed in alternative places like clubs, LadyFest and music venues.

I detoured to an MA in choreography at Northern School of Contemporary Dance. On completion of this I became pregnant, worked with Deborah Hay on Solo Performance Commissioning Project- making a solo adaptation from her choreography “I think Not …?” which was performed at Dance Base and Body Surf in Scotland when my daughter was a 9 months old. I was associate artist at Centre of Performance of Research and Maynard in West Wales. I performed my piece NEST in collaboration with my daughter from pregnancy until she was 4 years old.

I have worked with:

Guest Artist for Neurolive Symopsium at Siobhan Davis Dance Studios
https://neurolive.info/
Gentle Radical. Letters, Conversations and Provocations for Turner Prize nomination.
Wainsgate Dances in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire.
British Council. Performance in Profile.
Associate Artist for Maynard a resource for dance and rural performance in West Wales.
http://www.may-nard.org/
Associate Artist at Centre of Performance Research in Aberystwyth.
Vital Attachments by Katz Mulk. Invited artist on to collaborate on interdisciplinary performance as Part of Experimetica 2019.
Memories for Undressed Persons: a performance with Minako Seki Dance Co. at Berlin Neu National Gallery as part of their Melancholie festival March 06.
Play Yuhself by Adeloa Dewis performance art project that utilises aspects of Carnival dance.
Performance/Residency with Yubiwa Hotel, by Shirotama Hitsujiya.
Schools Projects in South Wales Valleys.
Young Male offenders at a prison in the former East Germany.
Intergenerational group workshops.
An Array of Opposites recent practice/habitat I have shared as workshops at Improv Exchange-Leeds and Wainsgate Dances.
Interruption-Basement 21 and artists from Wales (India/Wales), Chapter and Site-Speciﬁc at Cardiff Market- A project commissioned by Cardiff Dance Festival in collaboration with Basement 21.
The Latin America Project: a performance with the Andrea Severna Dance Company.
The Dream Regime. Performances with Geikidan Kaitaisha. Chapter Cardiff
Former recipient of Creative Wales Award.

NOW/DESIRE/FUTURE

My current works are:

Alternatives to Survival and An Array of Opposites & Marathon of Intimacies.

entangled ecologies of practice, performance and everyday living.

accumulative, evolving, responsive- perceptually specific choreographies- orientating around the connective distraction of transitory thought and sensation.

have been performed at Oriel Davies, Oriel Myrdin, the Twmpath in Abercych, and at Wainsgate Dances.

I believe/ask myself how:

…Somatic Dance can be a truly accessible space, enabling difference without fetishising it- dance with interactive interfaces.

…we can have more ordinary radical ways to bring workshops and events which are not based on emulation or a narrow range of virtuosities, rather worlds to seed, habitats of exchange, fusions which include embodied voices of resistance and dissonance.

…Inclusion and consent can be living interrogative presences through all the senses even those yet unidentified, responsive beings to be pleasurably wrangled and wrestled with rather than moulded or fitted into.

…we can abide with nuances of inclusion- of how artists and audiences can share and exchange within presence. People are diverse within modalities of thinking, feeling and expression… we may not need to remain incubating safe spaces/comfort zones… if we ask why they exist and of what are they made?

…to de-segregate oppositional binaries especially those propagated by the media- for example those dualities formed around gender, class, sex- sensuality, human-animal, child-adult-elder, victim-perpetrator, personal-political, success-failure.

…holding the mysteries of interactive live performance in my heart ask…

How can we re- emerge in cellular presence together?