I’ve been involved with live performance since 1988 on a variety of scales – collaborating on, devising and directing large and small scale pieces in different landscapes: on the shoreline, in the sea and on rivers, in fields, on cliffs, in the street, in parks, theatres, galleries, observatories, museums, and buildings ranging from a castle to a glass house.
The pieces I make and collaborate on have ranged from elaborate installations with complex sets, costumes, lighting, pyrotechnics and large casts, through to intimate solo, duet and small group performances in informal settings with little or no technical or production requirements.
I love to work with people from different backgrounds who bring different perspectives to live performance making. I have directed and collaborated on performances with people from different fields and with professional performers, students and people with little or no formal dance or performance training.
What I do is very much concerned with and responsive to the context in which it happens – with what’s already present, and with utilising the live-ness of live events as environments for exploration, learning, communication and transformation. I like making work outside of theatre contexts because it tends to attract people who would never set foot in the theatre, and because I like what’s presented by the location.
I work with both set and improvised materials as a way of exploring the immediacy of live performance. My site-specific pieces have made use of the visceral and three-dimensional nature of the environments in which they happened and have often brought large numbers of people together – performers and audiences, in works which celebrate connection.
I’ve worked as a performer, teacher and director in many different countries around the world.
What I do is informed and inspired by substantial working relationships with a number of dance artists including Steve Paxton, Lisa Nelson, Becky Edmunds, Scott Smith, Katye Coe, Siobhan Davies, Kirstie Simson, K.J.Holmes and many others.
With my partner Rob Hopper, I organise and produce Wainsgate Dances a programme of dance at Wainsgate Chapel in Yorkshire. It is an attempt to make a context for dance to happen in a non- institutionalised artist/participant/audience focussed space.
