While not being able to fully answer these questions, I felt there was a level of integrity brought about by our commitment to the non-visual experience of dance, simply for ourselves and for the richness of our individual practices. When we stopped trying to 'do this for them' and started 'doing this for us', and being led by our personal investment in challenging the dominance of the visual, things began to feel more authentic, less contrived and more full of possibility.
Read MoreIn our post-blacklivesmatter 2021 arts landscape in the UK, you could be forgiven for thinking that many institutions have changed, that marginalised identities are being given more space, that anti-racism is becoming centre-stage. And yet, when I try to voice a whiteness-related concern with an institution, most often they reply with a link to their webpage on anti-racism and diversity. Whose job has actually got easier?
Read MoreSwimming is the only time that I feel fully held by the world around me. There’s something about a complete immersion of my body in the water, something about how sound too becomes distorted and other-worldly, how every part of my skin is kissed and touched
Read More“The unpredictability of what will happen is what makes something alive. It is not about trying to recreate aesthetics or trying to make what people expect you to be making.”
Read More“When we were choreographing this production, we didn't know exactly what we were going to do, and it was on the way to the core of this work that we found out what we wanted to present.”
Read MoreA series of guides that speak to the freelance dance artist living and working in the UK. Shivaangee interviewed practitioners and compiled these features, on topics ranging from managing bodies to managing money.
Read MoreAshwini explained that she wanted to find ‘the truth behind the mythology’; to dig deeper into the stories she had been told as a child and as a dancer, to find her personal connection to them. It was indeed refreshing to know that such an unpretentious curiosity, grounded in the classical form, could be supported by the Arts Council.
Read MoreThis immersion allowed for an engagement with dance that was synchronous across our physical, emotional, musical and intellectual selves - a synchrony that is otherwise hard to come by in the disjointed nature of freelance urban life.
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