Meet our Global South Scholars on the MA Dance: Participation, Communities, Activism

The MA Dance: Participation, Communities, Activism programme at London Contemporary Dance School is now in its second year, gearing up to welcome its third cohort in September 2025. Unique in addressing the fields of community dance and arts activism for academic study, the course questions how movement and dance contribute to the creation of sustainable social structures, support individuals and communities, perform collective actions and challenge systemic inequity. Key to the ethos of the course is maintaining a truly global learning community; and with that comes the question of accessibility — particularly in the Global South. The fully funded Global South Scholarships offered each year to two applicants residing in the Global South have been central to bridging this gap and enabling more equitable growth of this timely and much-needed programme.

We talked to our current first and second year Global South Scholars to understand how the scholarship has impacted their learning and artistic journey on the course so far.

The application deadline for Global South Scholarships for Sept 2025 entry is Mon 17 Mar.

Meet the Scholars

Based in South Africa, in a township Eldorado Park in Johannesburg, Gladys' practice embodies dance/movement as a transformative force of creativity accessible for all; to uplift, inspire, heal, unite, and build communities. Her interest is in engaging with marginalised communities from within the different provinces in South Africa. This includes the young children and youth living with disability, mothers with children living with disability, mature women and the elderly within these communities.

What is the impact of the Global South Scholarship in your practice and your time on this course?

Gladys: I would not have been able to personally fund the fees for this course myself - it has been a blessing and a privilege to have this financial support. Moreover, I am able to study at The Place, an international institution, to acquire a qualification which I could not have received in my own country. Through this scholarship, I have became a global time traveler sitting in the comfort of my house, adapting within the different time zones of my peers, understanding and respecting diverse cultural communities on a global scale, and experiencing precious moments.

How has the MA Dance: Participation, Communities, Activism programme supported your practice so far?

Gladys:This amazing MA has opened local and global creative community doors not just for myself, but also for my community. Priceless international collaborations with my peers has set up a lot of interest on my study progress, the course, and my practice. I am now getting invitations to dance festivals in different provinces, and I am able to develop new workshops and choreography.

What will you take from the course into your future work?

Gladys: The most important is the special and precious moments I have encountered with each and every community and person I connected with. The method of studying how practice and theory merge together, and how this is important for ones practice is valuable to me personally. How can I continue to take this learning and impart it to my community, and how can I become a bridge between The Place and my Community and later on within South Africa and perhaps to some friend in the broader Africa...? I hope to fill the gap between Africa and UK - and become an ambassador for the course locally.

Marília is a dance artist practicing poetics and choreographic materialities collectively, seeking a position against the imposition of models, values or aesthetic orientations that prevent her autonomy, interconnection and her relationship with diversity. To do this, she draws inspiration from the forests around her. Based in Botucatu, São Paulo, Brazil - she is connected to the community formed by the Mirante das Artes cultural space there.

What is the impact of the Global South Scholarship in your practice and your time on this course?

Marília: This scholarship is essential for me, otherwise I wouldn't be able to take part in this course. I'm also very happy that the London Contemporary Dance School at The Place is offering this opportunity to people from the Global South. It's a fundamental start to looking at the social differences in our world and bringing other dance perspectives for reflection.

How has the MA Dance: Participation, Communities, Activism programme supported your practice so far?

Marília:The course is marvelous because it is hybrid, where most of our classes are online. This way we can continue to work directly with our communities. I think it's a visionary proposal to open a course that accepts people from all over the world, looking at the diverse possibilities of dance from so many eyes and artists. I also feel welcomed, from the language difficulties to the pedagogical support and support networks offered by the teachers.

What will you take from the course into your future work?

Marília:I'm learning so much, there are so many openings that I can visualise - artistically, educationally, academically. From the connection with incredible artists from all over the world, all the exchanges and the close bond we've created between our group, where we'll remain friends forever. Dance brings closeness, even for people who live so far apart.

Sádé is an Odissi dancer and her practice investigates the politics of Indian classical dance, embodiment, and the intersections of Caribbean and Indian classical dance. She works with abolition somatics and co-creative processes to challenge colonial legacies in dance while centering storytelling and cultural memory. Through intercultural performance, research, and facilitation, she explores how movement can be a tool for resistance and reclamation.

As of recently she works with a lot of dance communities, grassroots artists, and cultural practitioners in Trinidad and Tobago. Currently she is engaged with a small Carnival mas band ‘Vulgar Fraction’ in Trinidad to explore the intersection of performance and protest within Carnival. Through this connection, she is engaging in ethnographic research by immersing herself in the experience—using her body as both a participant and a research tool to examine embodiment in protest mas. This is helping her investigate and understand how movement, performance, and masquerade function as acts of resistance, challenging colonial narratives and reclaiming space through Carnival’s radical traditions. Parallel to this, she is working with a few Indian classical dancers in a co-learning space integrating somatic practices to investigate embodiment through a Caribbean-centered lens. This work explores how lived experiences, cultural memory, and decolonial perspectives shape movement, expanding the dialogue between Indian classical traditions and Caribbean dance practices.

What is the impact of the Global South Scholarship in your practice and your time on this course?

Sádé: WHEW!

Coming from Trinidad and the wider English-speaking Caribbean, access to programs like this is almost nonexistent. Opportunities to engage in dance education that is deeply connected to activism, participation, and community-led work simply don’t exist here at home. The performing arts in Trinidad, while rich in cultural expression, often suffer from a lack of structured institutional support, funding, and opportunities for critical engagement. This scholarship has been more than just financial support—it has been a gateway to knowledge, networks, and experiences that I could not have accessed otherwise.

I do believe that this opportunity isn’t just valuable for me — it highlights how critical it is for more artists from the Global South to have access to programs like this. If we are to build and strengthen the performing arts in our own countries, we need more artists who are equipped with the tools, frameworks, and resources to challenge systems, advocate for change, and reimagine new possibilities for dance.

A core part of my work is about decolonizing spaces and systems, and the first step in that process is decolonizing the body. This MA has been instrumental in helping me access and understand my own biopower — the ways in which movement, embodiment, and somatics are deeply connected to histories of control, resistance, and transformation. With the knowledge I am gaining here, I am better able to identify and challenge both the internal and external structures that shape the dance landscape back home in Trinidad. So, I don't see this scholarship as just an investment in my education or development, but as an investment in a brighter, more sustainable future for the performing arts in the Caribbean and even beyond.

How has the MA Dance: Participation, Communities, Activism programme supported your practice so far?

Sádé: This programme has given me a rare and invaluable space to test, refine, and expand my research interests while staying deeply connected to my community in real time. It has challenged me to think beyond traditional dance structures, pushing me to explore how movement functions as activism, resistance, and dialogue.

Through this MA, I’ve been able to deepen my confidence in facilitation skills and learned new ways to integrate dance with abolitionist and community-led work. The course has equipped me with the critical thinking skills and confidence to deeply investigate and challenge the politics of dance as I know it, while also empowering me to reimagine new possibilities within ethical and socially responsible frameworks. Example: Challenging purist notions of Odissi dance and balancing tradition with innovation. My deep dive into co-creative processes this term has shaped how I approach participatory choreography — not just setting movement on dancers but building movement with them. This shift has been essential in my work, ensuring that dance remains a shared, evolving process rather than something fixed or imposed or shaped solely by my own perspective.

The programme has also reinforced my passion for intercultural collaborations. It’s been a space to experiment, rethink, and develop new ways of working — ones that I know will shape not just my practice but also the future of dance in my community here in Trinidad and Tobago.

What will you take from the course into your future work?

Sádé: I will continue to integrate research with performance, using dance as both an archival and activist practice. In everything dance-related that I do, I want to ensure that movement remains a space for resistance, reimagining, and authentic community engagement.

Based in Santiago, Chile, Fernanda is an independent choreographer who does dance performances in public spaces. She also teaches choreography and pedagogy in dance at the University. She has researched collective practices for contemporary dance from a disciplinary perspective and now she is looking for ways to generate actions with wider communities. She also carries out the photographic archive of dances in Chile, with personal photographs of their community. In her practice, she engages with students of the professional dance career in Chile and is now starting a project with women of different ages.

What is the impact of the Global South Scholarship in your practice and your time on this course?

Fernanda: The impact of the scholarship has been tremendously relevant, as without it I would not have been able to enter this MA. In Chile, with the precariousness of the artistic environment and its competitive nature, it would not have been possible to study, so I am very grateful to have benefited from the scholarship.

How has the MA Dance: Participation, Communities, Activism programme supported your practice so far?

Fernanda:It has been beautiful to reconnect with learning. Sometimes the rhythms of life — motherhood, being a teacher, a cultural manager — do not allow you to stop and re-question the ways of doing, to renew or even reaffirm what you were doing. It is an exercise that I find beautiful and relevant. It has also broadened my theoretical range of dance practices with their communities, with activism and the infinite possibilities of connecting everything with dance. It has opened me to a powerful and supportive international community, where the concern for improving the ways of doing things in the world are tremendously relevant.

What will you take from the course into your future work?

Fernanda:Related to the previous answer, I take with me a community of people, both my peers and teachers, the curatorial team, the dance space that seeks to make a better world, I take with me multiple practices and concerns to continue researching. I take with me the crossing of dances with my multiple activism, for a poetic and artistic resistance, with an expanded community for future practices and places to come.