As every year for the summer months, The Place, London’s leading centre for dance and performance, is excited to welcome a new annual cohort of Choreodrome artists to its building for two-week long residencies, to research and work on new ideas.
Choreodrome is one of the most important dance development programmes in the UK, enabling artists to explore new territories and have access to tailored support. It’s part of The Place’s range of artist development opportunities designed to nurture talent and facilitate the growth of independent artists’ creativity and sustainability. The 16 artists selected this year are researching ideas across a wide range of practices, from Hip Hop and South Asian dance practices, to family works, illusion and magic tricks, storytelling, text and vocals.
The creation of new dance thrives best in collaboration and as always, The Place works with a number of partners and experts in their field, in order to best support a wide range of artists from different practices and with different needs. Our partners this year are:
East London Dance supporting the Hip Hop Booster Pack
Artists will receive focused and specialist producing and creative support from East London Dance to engage in a period of R&D.
Karthika Nair supporting the Writing for Dance Booster Pack
Artists will receive support from poet, playwright, fabulist and dance scenartist Karthika Nair to explore text in their performance work.
Corali partnership
The dance company exploring the relationship between dancers who identify as learning-disabled and those who do not; between dance and other art forms; and between professional and participatory artwork have been commissioned to create two dancer-led work-in-progress performances, which will be showcased in the theatre next year.
Izzy Brittain (she/they)
Izzy is a Yorkshire born and based interdisciplinary artist working across dance, poetry, storymaking, theatre and film. She will be working on The Smalls, an interdisciplinary arts project inviting children and their adults to explore ‘what’s underneath’, bringing the fascinating world of micro-bugs, soil animals and mesofauna to life. Izzy will also create a high-quality documentation (e.g. documentary, blog post, podcasts) to share her research, supported by Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF), Research England.
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Isaac Ouro-Gnao (he/they)
Isaac is a Togolese-British multidisciplinary artist, somatic trauma therapist, mental health scholar-activist, and freelance journalist, his work is rooted in magical realism, Africanfuturism, and indigenous African Spirituality around themes of childhood, trauma, memory, and mental health. you're a man now, boy is a project by and for Black men (trans and non-binary) with lived experiences of ill mental health, integrating Hip Hop, West African & contemporary dance, magical realism & indigenous African spirituality.
Isaac was selected for the Hip Hop Booster Pack
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Akshay Sharma (he/him)
Akshay is a choreographer and performer born and brought up in India and now based in London. He draws upon western contemporary forms and principles from non-European traditions by bringing together unique movement vocabulary, writing and his knowledge of Indian classical music (vocal). He hopes to create a cathartic space in which the South Asian experience is celebrated in all of its beauty. Akshay will be working on a new piece of dance with South Asian dance artists exploring movement, text and singing as voice on the themes of solidarity, sensuality and celebration.
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Dorine Mugisha (she/her)
Dorine, born in France to Tanzanian parents and now based in Glasgow, is a performer, instructor, and founder of Body Movement where she runs retreats, workshops, and events. She is passionate about seeing more representation of plus size bodies, nuanced stories of black bodies and themes around identity and belonging. Dorine has been developing her solo performance titled Asili (meaning Origins in Swahili), delving into her multicultural upbringing, navigating the intricacies of adapting to diverse people, places, and institutions - a journey of self-discovery and acceptance. During the residency, she will be deep diving into the choreographic element of this piece (using Whacking, Krump and traditional Tanzanian styles), as well as character development.
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Anthony Lo-Giudice (he/him)
Anthony is a contemporary dance artist based in the North of England working across the UK and Europe. He currently works as a dance theatre choreographer, performer and dance tutor. His work is often a poetic treatment of folkloric tales, tragic romances and references to mixed cultural anxieties that are communicated through the mediums of dance, theatre and gestural tableaux. Anthony and his collaborators are researching a new production called Ghosts of England, experimenting with the concept of England as a confluent idea, analysing our complex relationships towards territorial imperative and the flux's of national identity.
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Aishwarya Raut (she/her)
Aishwarya is a dancer and choreographer from India with a MA in dance. She has worked in film, fashion, stage and site specific works. She continues to develop her movement vocabulary with influences from Indian folk dance within contemporary movement. Aishwarya will be exploring female narratives in folk tales from the Maharashtra region in India diving into topics of desire, resistance and the influence of nature on the human body through a duet.
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Liam Francis (he/him)
Liam is a dance artist/maker from Brighton, whose career began at Zoonation Dance Company. As a choreographer, Liam is keen to explore how his hybrid embodied knowledge can find new and authentic configurations. As a choreographer, Liam has created works on international dance companies (Ballet Theater Trier, Rambert, SALLY dansgezelschap maastricht, Shechter2, Skånes Dansteater) as well as presenting his own work in Brighton, Hannover, London, Massachusetts, New York, Oxford and Rotterdam. Invitation, resistance, acceptance and pleasure all play a part in this work that draws on Liam’s own experiences of slowly allowing feelings of isolation, threat and competition to be replaced by trust, intimacy and friendship.
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Jackie Kibuka (she/her)
Jackie is a dancer, movement director, choreographer, teacher, actress with over 15 years experience in the UK street dance and Hip Hop theatre scene. She is an authentic and versatile mover in many styles including Waacking, Popping, Locking, House, Hip Hop, Contemporary & Commercial. She will be creating a dance theatre piece inspired by the life of her paternal grandad and personal Ugandan heritage. The piece is explores the narrative of first generation Uganda British on the journey of discovering legacy, heritage and their roots, using Hip Hop and street dance styles along with text and spoken work.
Jackie received the Writing for Dance Booster Pack.
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Ekleido (Faye Stoeser and Hannah Ekholm)
Ekleido is a choreographic duo made up of Hannah Ekholm (she/her) and Faye Stoeser (she/her) with their work being performed in multiple venues and festivals across the UK including Glastonbury, Breakin’ Convention at Sadler’s Wells, Resolution Dance Festival and Latitude. Inspired by the Rorschach inkblots, a personality test widely used in the 1960’s, they will explore themes of human perception creating live, moving adaptations of the symmetrical inkblots in an architecture of three bodies, combining contemporary dance with underground club/battle styles.
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Brooke Milliner (he/him)
Brooke, a six-time World Hip Hop Champion, has been a dominant force in the global Popping scene for over 15 years. Known for his exceptional musicality, intricate choreography, and technical prowess, he challenges perceptions of Street Dance Styles through storytelling and digital media. Brooke will be exploring his children's show, What’s Your Power?, using dance to convey a crucial message about embracing diversity.
Brooke was selected for the Hip Hop Booster Pack.
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Rikkai Scott (he/him)
Born and raised in Bermuda, Rikkai is a Coventry based choreographer, performer and a former dancer of Amsterdam based De Kiss Moves Fusion Dance Company and UK based Motionhouse. The Bo Jangles will be inspired by the tap pioneers such as Bill Bojangles, Nicholas Brothers, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Gregory Hines and more, heavily influenced by the pioneers' individual stories which were greatly affected by their race, upbringing, and position in society. In Spring 2021, through an R&D supported by Arts Council England, DanceEast, National Dance Foundation of Bermuda and now, through Choreodrome, the aim will be to expand the work into a larger cast and develop the production for touring.
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Shyam Dattani (he/him)
Shyam is a London-based mover and maker whose practice is grounded by strong technique, training and choreographic thinking, as well as trying to shift thinking regarding the innate gender roles within Kathak. He combines his unique perspective as a queer diasporically-trained dancer and love for costuming in his choreography. Dvihīna, Sanskrit for ‘devoid of gender’, is an ensemble South Asian dance exploration with diasporically-trained Kathak dance artists of diverse gender expression.
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Tom Cassani (he/him)
Tom is a UK based performance maker working with choreography, magic and live art. His performances draw on an expanded approach to magic examining the nature of perception and truth. Using his body as a site of deception his work explores the construct of performing the impossible. Tom's project examines the body as an unreliable measure of truth, exploring the public/private body and hidden labour intrinsic in embodying deception, taking skills from the world of magic and circus sideshow into new choreographic modes and contexts.
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Eva Recacha (she/her) and Alberto Ruiz (he/him)
Eva and her collaborator Alberto have been working together for over 10 years, putting at the centre of the choreographic work the relationship between movement, sound and text, creating a distinct dance theatre practice. Together, they have explored themes of belief and ritual, and more recently themes of gender, visibility and ageing. Their work is a story of friendship, making art work, and exile. This research will place both Eva and Alberto on stage exploring how we make work, questioning our established methodology and breaking apart the relationship between movement and sound.
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Solène Weinachter (she/her)
Solène is a choreographer, performer and teacher based between Scotland and France. She is a founding member of Collective Endeavours, a Glasgow-based music and dance collective that performs improvised pieces in non-conventional spaces in the UK and abroad. The choreodrome residency will be part of the initial research period of a new show looking at how the dedicated space of a theatre with all its artifices, suited for magic and illusion, can enhance a performance that talks about manufactured truth.
Solène is part of the 'Writing for Dance' booster pack and will receive the mentoring of writer and dramaturg Karthika Nair to develop the text in this project.
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Corali Partnership
Corali was founded by a social service worker, Virginia Moffatt, in a Southwark day centre in 1989. Initially a casual dance group, the name Corali is made of letters from the original company members’ names. Corali exists to make excellent and exciting live performances and film. Our practice is rooted in collaboration; we explore the relationship between dancers who identify as learning-disabled and those who do not; between dance and other art forms; and between professional and participatory artwork. Corali is creating two dancer-led work-in-progress improvisational performances. Dancers, Housni Hassan, Jackie Ryan, Bethan Kendrick, Sheri King, Chloe Mantova, Aaron Higgins, Alice Haddock and Nancy Clayton will be performing. They will be working collaboratively with other artists including musician Matt Webb and painter Mark Beldan.
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