Delving into Dance

“every human has a body and bodies tell stories”

“Dance, it has a tribal background, everyone does dance, initially, as kids, and we will do it socially. So I think there's a very powerful message there that can be utilised by choreographers when they're creating their works.”

‘you have to make everyone go at their own pace’

"In term of my career, I've spent most of it - if not all of it - in youth dance."

“Dance can provide a space for people to have a kinesthetic response to something and to be given a place to meet their body in watching another body move.”

"I really loved the freedom of expression, and just realising that... I don't need to use my mouth if I wanna tell a story."

“some of the best advice that I ever got, as a young student, was make the dance that you want to watch”

“I love my track pants and I wouldn't be seeing dead in the pair of tights.”

“I am totally hooked by collaboration, particularly with friends”

“I want us to all be held responsible for watching what is happening on stage, as opposed to 'I can't see the person next to me. And so therefore, it doesn't matter'. Actually, I want us to all take part in what I'm putting on stage and be responsible and have thoughts about that. If we do that, then we're having a bigger conversation about what has actually on our stage today.”

“I have this curiosity for what my body remembers, also pre this life that I've known. And that's not to be esoteric, that's actually anchored in some of the incredibly fascinating research to do with trauma in the body and generational trauma.”

“There is something about sharing something with somebody, or about teaching somebody something that allows space for a conversation that you might not normally have.”

“my ambitions are taking me into other mediums where there is such a liberation, because I don't know the rules, because I don't understand the parameters because I don't understand techniques, because I don't understand tools, or how to do this, or what I should be doing. You know, and there's, there's such a liberation in that. And I think the most valuable thing that I have at the moment is this costume design situation.”

“Dance has the ability to take the moment and to expand that out, so you can almost, you can take one or a few things, and really pull them apart and really understand them. […] Dance allows the possibility for authentic human to human encounters; that I think are becoming more and more precious in this digital world.”

“I am such an instinctual person as well, I really trust in the process, and allowing things to evolve and come up. So the work, in away makes its self along the way.”

“you actually can you have agency in designing your own career”

“As dancers and dance scholars we have the ability to articulate how embodied senses of self in the world and how specific embodied practices come to have social meaning, and how those presumed meanings circulate in public discourse, influencing public policy and political claims, with long term and complex results.”

“I try to make the ballet world a lot more colourful, diverse and a lot more inclusive.”

“The fact that the sexual undertone, or the desiring undertone that a lot of dance is operating through, for me it was very important to make it explicit. To actually say ‘okay part of what is happening here is a question of desire, it is a question of being stimulated physically. Then there are many different levels or layers of this happening of course. In my work it was about saying, we have to recognise that these underlying structures are there, and if we recognise it and even expose it...

"I am observing them, observing me."