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Choreodrome supports dance artists to research and develop performance ideas.
At The Place, our unique positioning within the dance industry allows us to offer artists at every stage of their career the chance to experiment and stimulate innovation.
Through Choreodrome, our annual programme for artists with at least three years professional experience, makers are encouraged to explore new artistic territory without the pressure of creating a finished product.
This year, The Place is launching two new partnership with East London dance, who will be hosting the Hip Hop residency, and with AΦE (AE), a Kent based dance company founded by Aoi Nakamura and Esteban Lecoq who will be hosting a VR residency in their studio in Chatham.
Find out about the projects the Choreodrome 2023 Artists plan to develop below:
Louise Ahl (She/Her)
Louise is a UK-based choreographer and performer originally from Sweden, making solo and collaborative multi-art-form performance and installation work using movement, vocals, writing and sound. Louise will be working on Skunk without k is Sun, a scented solo opera, working with audio description as operatic sung material.
Follow Louise on Instagram
J Neve Harrington (She/Her)
J Neve prioritises explorations around access, play, agency, confrontation by times/scales beyond the human and neurodivergent information processing. FIVES will be a new work for young audiences exploring the ways we can show and ask for affection based on the 5 love languages of gifting, words of affirmation, acts of service, quality time and touch combined with the 5 primary senses: touch, sight, sound, smell and taste.
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Simeon Qysea (He/Him)
Simeon is an award winning film writer, director, choreographer & founder of BirdGang Ltd. He will be exploring techno music’s relation to Detroit and the black, working and middle class experience, inspired by Jenn Nikuru’s ‘Black to Techno’.
Bakani Pick-Up (He/they)
Bakani is a Zimbawean born Yorkshire based choreographer and improvisation practitioner. He will research the discourse of the Black Dancing body, exploring how improvisation contextualises Blackness - how autonomy may be exercised through performance.
Neus Gil Cortes (She/Her)
A former dancer with Hofesh Shechter, NDCWales and Dance Works Rotterdam, Neus formed Nua Dance in 2015 and has worked in circus, theatre TV and film. Their Choreodrome work will use optical illusions to question perceived realities and prove our bias, shaking our expectations.
Lydia Cottrell (She/Her)
Lydia isa Leeds-based artist creating multi-disciplinary performance that interrogates culture and technology. As part of the VR residency she will be developing an immersive, digital experience of “Brightside”, a part dance theatre part spin class performance, that explores the modern condition and the millennial psyche.
Lydia received the VR Residency Commission in partnership with with AΦE (AE)
Follow Lydia on Instagram
Ching Ying Chien (She/Her)
A dancer and choreographer from Taiwan, Ching Ying won a National Dance Award for her performance in Until the Lions by Akram Khan Company. Her latest choreography work, Vulture, was performed at the Lilian Baylis Studio and has also been selected as one of 20 pieces in Aerowaves 2023. She will use her residency to research the nature of dream states, humor, the abstract and surrealism, exploring physical elasticity, tension and release in both mental and physical ways.
Follow Ching Ying on Instagram
Seke Chimutengwende (he/him)
Seke is a choreographer, performer, movement director and teacher. He is currently working as a performer with Forced Entertainment and teaching improvisation and choreography at London Contemporary Dance School. Seke is creating a quartet exploring the tension between the desire for change and the desire for permanence using choreographic scores.
Chaldon Williams (he/him)
A multi disciplined artist who creates intricate and unique work, Chaldon has worked with brands and artists such as Nike, Adidas and Beyonce. His Choreodrome project is based on black royalty and UK culture, touching on men’s mental health, relationships and spirituality.
Chaldon received the Hip Hop Residency in partnership with East London Dance.
Follow Chaldon on Instagram
Lula Mebrahtu (She/Her)
Lula aka LULA.XYZ is a multidisciplinary artist at the intersection of art, music and tech. She is working on a modular series about first generation imMigrant Lula Berhane as she navigates the duality of two cultures, her Habesha (Eritrean/Ethiopian) heritage and British identity. OommoO (an acronym for One-of–many-many-of-One) interweaves language and customs with innovative HighTech storytelling tools; it unpacks life through an Afro-Futuristic East African lens. Lula is an early adopter and pioneering practitioner of the MiMu Gloves (midi-gestural-controller).
Lula received the Hip Hop Residency in partnership with East London Dance.
Follow Lula on Instagram
Louise Orwin (She/Her)
Louise is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist making provocative, political, pop-culture-infused performance projects across text, performance and video. FAMEHUNGRY is a show about fame, the future and the sneaking suspicion that social media is distracting us from the apocalypse. Working alongside TikTok stars, the show explores the attention economy, what it’s like to be the star of your own perpetual broadcast, and what one fame-hungry performance artist can learn from fame-hungry TikTokkers about the future
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Esme Benjamin (KWAM Collective) (She/Her)
Esme Benjamin is a movement artist, somatic practitioner and Co-Director of KWAM Collective, a group of independent artists from the fields of dance theatre, live performance, digital art and therapeutic bodily practices. Esme has a deep interest in the relationship between body, language and liberation which combined with KWAM’s research into the body, its place in society, and its potential for creative expression, explores a methodology that challenges hierarchical structures. Underpinning this is KWAM’s recent creation, ‘SOMA’, an experimental movement film based on a contemporary myth of the genesis of the human body.
Follow KWAM Collective on Instagram
Ella Tighe (She/Her)
A Bradford based dancer, maker, teacher, and mentor, Ella started out as a Disco Freestyle dancer before a contemporary dance, improvisation & somatic based training. Disco Queen is an autobiographical dance theatre work that delves into the world of Freestyle Dancing.
Follow Ella on Instagram
Sababa Co. (Bar Groisman) (She/Her)
Sababa Co. is the creative output of choreographer and movement director Bar Groisman. Founded in 2019, it is a contemporary dance theatre company creating physical and theatrical dance works that push the boundaries between movement, text, music, and set. They will use Choredrome to continue researching Coiled Up, a new contemporary dance theatre work exploring the reality of having a womb.