Hip Hop and Contemporary Dance artist, and Disability Activist
Annie Edwards is a dance artist from Brighton, now based in London. She currently works as a professional dancer in contemporary and hip hop styles, alongside a collaborative choreography practise and training in house dance. Her main artistic interests lie in improvisation, collaborative processes and disability advocacy.
Before studying at London Contemporary Dance school she was a member of ZooNation: A Kate Prince Company and the National Youth Dance Company. Since graduating she has performed in the UK and internationally with companies such as Candoco Dance Company, Scottish Ballet & Nowness, Boy Blue Ent, Moxie Brawl and Theatre Rites. She works as rehearsal director and dancer for LCDS alumni and Sadler’s Wells Young Associate Olive Hardy. After the pandemic she co-founded Anhelo Collective with Alejandra Gissler and Laura Ahumada, premiering their first choreographic work at Resolution Festival 2022 and touring to Germany. She started a mentorship with Indahouse UK and has since been battled in London and Lithuania.
Outside of performing, she has been a disability consultant for Greenwich Dance and member of EDI committee at The Place, where she has continued to advocate and work creatively to improve accessibility in the arts and dance sector. She has recently developed her teaching practise and has delivered workshops for Gather Up at the Arnolfini, The Place professional class and Candoco Dance Company at Siobhan Davies Studios.
Her personal practise is strongly influenced by her love of music, desire to work among friends and experience as a disabled person. She uses dance to inhabit and understand the body expansively. She enjoys moving sensitively- with joy, patience and presence. Her artistic endeavours are to continue being inspired by her peers and collaborators, and centre the experience of disability within her own dance as well as the wider field.