About Webinar Wednesdays 2026
Webinar Wednesdays return for 2026! Our weekly online sessions for dance professionals are programmed to encourage curiosity and connection. Each session of this year’s webinars, will feature exceptional artists joining together to gain broader perspectives of a shared topic, expanding our knowledge and developing what we know about dance and dance practice.
The webinars are facilitated by Ben Wright (The Place's Artist Associate) exploring topics that are resonant, practical and nourishing, to help dance professionals expand their making practices.
All webinars are BSL interpreted
17 June: Queer Rewilding: Exploring the intersection between folklore, queerness and ecology
In this conversation, artist, academic and London Contemporary Dance School lecturer Andrew Sanger speaks with interdisciplinary artist Seyi Adelekun and artist, curator, and creative producer Joseph Morgan Schofield.
Together, they will discuss how their practices shape their distinct and dynamic approaches to performance. Tracing threads through nature, ceremony, ecosomatics, ritual, and fluidity, alongside their lived experiences to discover the alliances between these practices and the LGBTQIA+ experience. Drawing on queer kinship, folklore, and ancestral heritage, they'll contemplate what it means to make, hold and inhabit spaces that challenge the concept of the natural v. the unnatural.
If you're interested in exploring themes of nature, environmentalism, storytelling and queer culture in your work, this is one for you.
BSL interpretation by Sumayya Si-Tayeb and Tayo Igbintade
Seyi Adelekun
| Seyi Adelekun (they/them) is a London-based interdisciplinary artist of Yoruba-Nigerian heritage. Weaving together installation, performance, ritual, sound and social practice, their work serves as a medium for world-building liberatory futures by archiving and sharing ancestral wisdom. Drawing on principles of planetary healing, Seyi explores spirituality as a vital force in resisting environmental racism and ecological degradation. Their work engages diverse ways of knowing and relating through oral traditions, as well as embodied and land-based practices. In doing so, they create spaces for deep listening and collective care, honouring the interwoven lives of land, bodies and spirit.Seyi Adelekun has exhibited at South London Gallery, London Festival of Architecture, KLA ART Festival, Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail, and London Design Festival. They have undertaken residencies at Somerset House, The Place, G.A.S. Foundation, Iniva / Stuart Hall Library, and 32 Degrees East. They have facilitated workshops for the Barbican Centre and developed projects with Assemble Studio, Artangel, and Tate Britain. (@seyi_adelekun) |
Joseph Morgan Schofield
| Joseph Morgan Schofield (he/they) is a curator, artist and creative producer. At the heart of these entangled practices is an understanding of performance art as a potent, contemporary modality of ritual. He / they draws on queer, ecological and esoteric thought to engage with the lost, the unseen and the forgotten. He understands his performances and films as thin places, as ceremony, as a way of practicing sensitivity, of reorienting attention and touching the more raw edges of experience. As a curator, Joseph activates spaces for collective encounter through Future Ritual, cultivating intergenerational exchange and artist-led research, experimentation and creation. Future Ritual is a long term curatorial, research and organising practice initiated in 2017. Since 2024, Joseph has worked as Curator, Public Practice at Tate. Previous roles have included those at Live Art Development Agency, The Place and ]performance s p a c e[. JMS was also co-founder and co-director of VSSL studio. Across all this work, Joseph remains committed to the live and embodied practices which welcome complexity, sensitivity, tension and difficulty. Joseph lives in London (UK) but most often works in dialogue with the wet, windy Pennine moors and Cumbrian fells of the English North West. https://futureritual.co.uk/abo... https://josephmorganschofield.... |
Andrew Sanger
| Originally from Michigan, Andrew (he/him) is a researcher-artist working across dance, anthropology, and ecology. He completed his PhD in Anthropology at University College London studying under Hélène Neveu-Kringelbach and Jerome Lewis where he wrote about how environmental sensibility might be cultivated through dance practice, performance, and protest in the UK. Alongside teaching and research, he has been a company dancer with Jody Oberfelder Projects, and Vatic Theatre performing in the USA, UK, and Germany. His performance specialism is on interactive, site-responsive work including performing at St Pancras Station, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Millenium Bridge, and the Olympic Park in Munich. He is a current member of Thrales Rapper, an English folk sword dance group. He has recently shared choreography at the UK River Summit at Morden Hall and current research interests include queer ecology, folk practice and environmental movement practices. https://theplace.org.uk/profil... |
24 June: Making Dance Heard: Building access into audience-led encounters
A conversation between dancer, maker and researcher, Shivaangee Agrawal, Meera Patel, a dance artist working across facilitation, performance and making and Amelia Lander-Cavallo, co-founder and director of Quiplash, a queer crip-led creative company who make accessible performances that platform queer disabled creatives.
Shivaangee and Meera have a close working relationship and shared practices that are rooted in classical Indian forms, and a focus on advocacy for access for performance and film. Quiplash offers consulting and training support on accessibility, disability awareness, and disability justice.
This webinar will unpack the aesthetic and ethical concerns of making access-led work that considers an audiences’ additional needs from the outset. Looking at the process of consultation with blind and visually impaired artists, how dual roles as makers and describers inform each other and the reality of conflicting access needs.
If you're a choreographer who has yet to consider audio description, or a dance artist curious about deepening your knowledge about this form of access, then this is one for you.
BSL interpretation by Sumayya Si-Tayeb and Samuel Rojas
Meera Patel
| Meera (she/her) is a dance artist working across facilitation, performance and making. Her recent work includes performing with Pagrav Dance Company (PDC), Amina Khayyam Dance Company, collaborating with Peut-Étre Theatre, VocalEyes and residencies at Sadler’s Wells and Space Clarence Mews. Meera teaches at PDC, Sadler’s Wells and Sense Arts. Meera approaches her independent practice through a lens of access as a positive resource for collective experiences of dance; building relational empathy and countering normative ideologies. She is a trained audio describer and collaborates with artists/companies to engage audiences through multi-sensory creations. @_meera |
Shivaangee Agrawal
| Shivaangee (she/they) is a dancer, maker and researcher with an experimental practice that orbits sound-making, collective composition and creative technology. They are constantly curious about dance as a medium through which we can stay with our multiplicities - across our physical, social, relational, autobiographical and political experiences. Shivaangee also offers an embodied audio description practice motivated by the imperative to keep re-centering non-visual experiences. They speak about the complexity of access; it can be easy to renew existing hierarchies even within our intentions to broaden participation. More at shivaangee.com |
Amelia Lander-Cavallo
Amelia (they/them) is a blind and neurodiverse artist, academic, facilitator and theatre practitioner and a co-founder of Quiplash CIC.
They’re an experienced and charismatic facilitator, speaker and host. They develop and deliver the majority of the training, consulting, workshops, etc for Quiplash.
Amelia moved to the UK from New Mexico, USA in 2006 and has worked for around 20 years in the field of performance and audio description (AD), contributing to research and writing, supporting artists and companies to find exciting and creative ways to utilise this access tool. They have their own methodology ‘Queer AD’ which is used by audio describers in projects and theatres across the UK and abroad.
As an academic and researcher, Amelia has written multiple published pieces on AD and access, including recently co-authoring Integrated Access In Live Performance (Routledge, 2022) and contributing a chapter to Drag Vistas and Visions: Drag in a Changing Scene Volume 3 Chapter 9.Camp Quips: drag, access and queer crip joy as an act of resistance.
As a host, Amelia also won British Podcast of the Year in 2024 for their audible podcast Press Play, Turn On (NSFW).
Amelia has worked in the UK and internationally as a touring actor-musician, burlesque performer, aerialist and drag king and was even on East Enders for 38 seconds!!
Quiplash
Quiplash does a bit of everything! Training, consulting, workshops, advising, access audits, writing, researching, hosting, producing, artist development, key note speeches, performing, directing, access dramaturgy, mentoring, advocacy…
Quiplash works at the intersection of disability, LGBTQ+ identities and community, creating welcoming spaces and creative work where people come together, build skills and form stronger relationships.
By fostering connections and relationships in the LGBTQ+ disabled community, they support people to reach their potential, reduce isolation, raise disability awareness, and encourage long-term collaboration between and improvement within communities and the cultural spaces that matter to them.
They support individuals, spaces, projects, shows, organisations, companies etc to become more inclusive and accessible, making people feel welcome, connected, and able to take part fully in professional, community and cultural life.
1 July: Starting Before You’re Ready: Inhabiting a space between not-knowing and action
Award-winning choreographer and performer Jeanine Durning discusses her practice ‘Nonstopping’ with The Place’s Artist Associate, Ben Wright.
Jeanine has been developing ‘Nonstopping’ since 2009 as a compositional tool for making. It draws on a practice that The New Yorker described as holding "the potential for philosophical revelation and theatrical disaster.” Alongside choreographer, director and creative facilitator, Ben Wright, they will explore how sustained attention, faith in uncertainty, and a willingness to simply begin, even if imperfectly, might open up new possibilities for dance-making.
Jeanine is based on the East Coast of the United States so this will be an exciting opportunity for artists based in the UK and beyond to hear her speak about her work.
BSL interpretation by Sumayya Si-Tayeb and Samuel Rojas
Jeanine Durning
| Jeanine Durning (she/her) is a Guggenheim and Alpert award-winning choreographer and performer. Her work investigates the mutable potential and presence-making of moving bodies, and their conditions in time, space, and situation. Since 1998, she has created performances that blur artistic and aesthetic boundaries, and since 2009, her “nonstopping” practice has formed the core of her ongoing research, operating in the spaces between thought, perception, movement, and language. From 2010-2020, she toured her solo performance, inging (an ongoing experiment in non-stopping speech) which has been widely recognized for its expanded notion of choreography, exploring the structures and phenomenology of thought in extemporaneous movement and speech. Durning’s performances and choreographies have been presented throughout the U.S., Europe, and in Canada, including at NYU Skirball and BAM in NYC, Dansens Hus in Stockholm, and Sadler's Wells in London where her work Last Shelter for Candoco Dance Company premiered in 2021. Durning has been a guest lecturer of dance, performance and choreography at SNDO/Amsterdam, Movement Research/NYC, HZT/Berlin, SKH/Stockholm and many University dance programs in the States, including NYU and Smith College. She has collaborated with many choreographers over the years, including with post-modern dance pioneer Deborah Hay since 2005, in the capacities of performer, coach, co-director, and consultant to the Motion Bank, a project of the Forsythe Company. From 2020-2023, she was Rehearsal Director for Cullberg in Stockholm, directing and touring the choreography of Deborah Hay in repertory. |
Ben Wright
Ben (he/him) is a choreographer, director and creative facilitator working across dance, opera, theatre, and film. He trained at The Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance and served as Artistic Co-Director for Candoco Dance Company (2017-2020), Associate Artistic Director/Choreographer at Skånes Dansteater (2014-2017), and interim Artistic Lead at National Dance Company Wales (2021). He lectured in improvisation and performance at Northern School of Contemporary Dance (2022-2024).
Recent movement work for theatre includes Chariots of Fire (Sheffield Theatres), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Opera North), La Bohème (Washington National Opera), Orlando (The Garrick, West End), and as a movement/intimacy director Atonement(Chichester Festival Theatre) The Line of Beauty (Almeida Theatre) My Master Builder (Wyndham’s) My Policeman (Amazon Studios) and Funny Woman (Sky Atlantic).
Ben created five shows for his own company bgroup from 2008 – 2019 including About Around and the RTI commission Point of Echoes. His work for Skånes Dansteater includes To see the world while the light lasts, Spectrum, To find a way with one another, and the feature film of his production The Feeling of Going - a fully orchestrated staging of Sigur Ros frontman Jonsi’s album GO. Ben also created The Lost Thing for The Royal Opera House and Candoco and A space in the Dark for Black Box Dance Theatre.
As a performer Ben worked for Stan Wont Dance, Adventures in Motion Pictures, Ricochet, London Contemporary Dance Theatre, Richard Alston, and Amanda Miller. In 1995 he created the role of the Prince in Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake and was the original Golden Monkey for the National Theatre’s production of His Dark Materials.
More info - www.benwrightcreative.com and Instagram @ben_wright_movement_
8 July: Change, Care and Cost: Making performance rooted in community
A conversation between freelance dance artist Dr Gillie Kleiman and the co-director of Common/Wealth, Rhiannon White. Gillie brings her own extensive experience of working from within a marginalised community and in professional dance with non-professional dancers, while Rhiannon brings Common/Wealth's long practice of making ambitious, socially engaged theatre directly with and in communities.
In this webinar, the pair will discuss what it really takes to make performance that truly belongs to a community and is not just made for it. They will explore their processes and political and personal motivations for creating site-specific and community-focused performance. You’ll hear about the slow and careful work necessary to cultivate genuine relationships and start to consider the practical, emotional, and economic demands involved with this practice. The artists will share testimony of the changes they have experienced and what changes they aspire to foster in people, places, and structures.
This conversation will be of interest to anyone looking to create work that makes a real difference within their community or already incorporating community-engaged practice in their work.
BSL interpretation by Sumayya Si-Tayeb and Tayo Igbintade
Gillie Kleiman
| Gillie Kleiman (she/her) works with and in dance and choreography, creating performances, texts, events and pedagogical encounters.
Gillie’s work has a persistent interest in both the figure and the activity of the non-professional, and many of the projects have involved participation of non-professional collaborators or of the audience. In 2020, Gillie initiated a new cycle of thinking and working about fat and fatness. Gillie has degrees in dance and performance, including a PhD in Dance Studies. Gillie lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne. https://www.gilliekleiman.com/ |
Rhiannon White
Rhiannon (she/her) is co-founder and Co-Artistic Director of Common/Wealth.
Based in our Cardiff office, Rhiannon heads up the Welsh artistic programme and Moving Roots Touring Network (with Battersea Arts Centre, Restoke, Old Courts and Jumped Up).
Rhiannon often collaborates with co-director Evie on works across the UK and internationally. They have made work in Palestine, Chicago, Perth, Helsinki and Germany.
Shows in development include The Sea is Mine a collaboration between women in Cardiff and Jenin, Palestine about travelling beyond your circumstances and Demand the Impossible, a show about the impact of undercover policing in the UK.
Rhiannon sits on the board of the Grange Pavilion and is on the Aberystwyth Arts Advisory Panel.
Common/Wealth
Common/Wealth make site-specific theatre events that encompass electronic sound, new writing, visual design and verbatim. Our work is political and contemporary – based in the present day – the here and now. We make work that is relevant and addresses concerns of our times.
We seek out places to stage our work that are right in a community; a residential house, a boxing gym, places where people who might not go to the theatre might come to instead – we aim to make theatre for people who don’t usually think it’s for them, we’re bored of theatre being for the middle classes and those that can afford it – we genuinely believe in theatre as an art form and the power it has. We think this should belong to everyone – as audience, participants and as protagonists.
Common/Wealth started working together in 2008 in a very DIY way with no funding just access to massive buildings and networks of great people to collaborate with. On every project we seek to make something that will engage audiences in an encounter that pushes what theatre can be. We’re not necessarily interested in traditional story-telling but in creating memorable, unexpected experiences.
Our ideas are rooted in socialist politics, working class backgrounds, a keen interest in contemporary music/theatre/art/design, the people that we meet and an idealistic ambition to shift things. We see our plays as campaigns, as a way of bringing people together and making change feel possible.
Common/Wealth are based in Bradford and Cardiff and make award-winning work across the UK and internationally. We are part of Arts Council England’s national portfolio, recipients of the Breakthrough Fund with the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, and also part of the national portfolio of arts organisations in Wales.