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Showing posts from 2019

Re:generations (7th-9th November)

Pictured: Adeola Akinleye and Harry Fulleylove Dance and the Digital space, conference 2019. International perspectives in dance of the African Diaspora. Exploring the exciting world of digital and dance of the African Diaspora, at the Lowry with One Dance UK. "Re:generations, dance and the digital space is a unique opportunity to explore how digital innovation in dance of the African diaspora can connect audiences around the world with new and exciting art." With speakers and panelists such as Antoine Marc (pictured) Hakeem Onibudo and Amanda Spann, masterclasses from Faso Danse Théâtre, and performances from artists such as Dickson Mbi and Kalakuta Republik there is something for everyone. 

Queering the Somatic: Interrupting the Narrative Symposium

     Past dance student  Jac Coxall from Middlesex University After an insightful weekend at Middlesex University where we hosted the Symposium... Queering the Somatic: Interrupting the Narrative, we are proud to say this has been our third year hosting a successful symposium event.  Take a look below for a little bit of an insight into what one of the participants experienced during the weekend.  "This was a phenomenal eye-opening opportunity to be involved in. Being at the symposium was a very interesting experience getting the opportunity to engage in a wide range of platforms for exploring ideas surrounding "Queerness" including performance, workshops, presentations, and interactive discussions.  Before engaging in the Symposium, I had a very general idea of what Queer was and meant. By the end of the weekend, I had a much more open and but strangely enough, a more undefined understanding of what this term meant. I also found myself slightly more confuse
We are excited to announce the International One Dance UK Conference 2019, Re:generations - dance in the digital space. With a focus on dance of the African Diaspora (DAD), this event aims to bring the dance community together to stimulate critical debate, share current practice, research and innovation and encourage new perspectives for the future. The theme for Re:generations 2019 is dance in the digital space. We will explore the ways digital technologies can be used for artistic innovation and creative practice, unite global communities through online platforms whilst increasing the visibility of diverse work to mainstream audiences. The conference provides an international platform connecting UK artists, practitioners and scholars with global leaders from Africa, Canada, the Caribbean, Europe, USA and beyond. Across the 3 days there will be panel discussions, lecture demonstrations, masterclasses, workshops, academic paper presentations, performances, networking even

Queering the Somatic:Interrupting the narrative system

Join us this Friday and Saturday at Middlesex University, London... The symposium offers opportunities to explore, challenge and celebrate the act of dispelling binaries: mind-body, male-female, subject-object. The symposium will look at the connections between dance, (which emphasises the felt over the ‘named’, dispelling binaries and challenging Western constructs of the passive body.) and queer theory. Queer theory is a field of critical thinking emerging in the early 1990’s drawing on feminism and queer studies to challenge social constructs and identities. Moving beyond the social constructs of the body both dance and queer theory offer a fluidity for narrating the lived experience; narrations that interrupt dominant stories of identity and how we move through the world. The symposium is looking for contributions that might re-imagine, re-educate, re-think, reveal and allow us to re-create a world without the limits of binaries that reflect the somatic experience of B

Architectural Body/ Urban Choreography

Summer Information and application link can be found at  www.dancingarchitects.org  or  https://www.facebook.com/dancingarchitects/

July 5th Africa Writes: our bodies speak poetry -The British Library

July 5 th Africa Writes: our bodies speak poetry -The British Library http://africawrites.org/uncategorized/our-bodies-speak-poetry-meet-the-poets/ Our Bodies Speak Poetry , our first headline event is set to be an exciting evening filled with awe-inspiring storytelling, and a poetical exploration into our relationship with the (physical, political, and fantastical) body.  The evening will open with a dance piece by Adesola Akinleye, accompanied by music curated by BORN:FREE, one of London’s leading platforms for African and Afro-Diasporic poetry and writing. Our MC, Jessica Horn, will share some of her own work, engaging in conversation with us, and the poets, discussing themes surrounding poetry and the body.  Photo Credit F Christofilopoulou

June 20th Inventory of Behaviours - Tate

June 20 th Inventory of Behaviours  - Tate https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/tate-exchange/workshop/inventory-behaviours-regulation-resistance-readiness Adesola will be part of June 20 th daily discussions (Tuesday to Thursday 15:30 - 17:00, and Friday 14:00 -15:30) which will provide a space for reflection and discussion between participants and experts from a variety of educational and creative disciplines. Contributors will include Kevin Hunt, Kelly Large, Claire Makhlouf Carter, Harold Offeh, James Saunders and Michelle Williams Gamaker. In these informal discussions we will consider together whether behaviours like crying, sleeping, staring at the wall or sorting things are strategies, conscious or not, integral to creativity. And can they be considered as work?

Learning Environments: Whitechapel Gallery

This will be a great discussion led by Aoife Donnelly and Kristin Trommler which Adesola will be speaking at, bringing together her work with architecture and design and the dance performance that we toured last year   'Light Steps' and 'Found' . Whitechapel Gallery is a short walk away from where Adesola went to school herself, "so it's nice to be back in the manor to talk about dance/art/design and learning!" (Adesola Akinleye) Whitechapel Gallery,  Learning Environments: A Discussion  Talk https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/events/learning-environments-a-discussion/ Saturday 15 June, 2pm £9.50/£7.50 Alternative, democratic, and self-lead education models and the architectural responses associated with them, are the subject of this conversation led by the architects Aoife Donnelly and Kristin Trommler. Case studies include the practices of 20 th Century radical pedagogues, from Ricardo Dalisi and KEKS to the progressive Post-war Schools move

June 7th Hybrid Practices @Urban Room - University of Reading

https://woodforgood.com/index/woodfest-reading/urban-room-hybrid-practices 12–2pm Dialogue I: Movement-Lab What is the relationship between choreographic movement and architectural design? What if we designed a building on the basis of a dance score? How do you experience space around you on a daily basis? Led by choreographer Adesola Akinleye and movement director ,  Struan Leslie, this interactive workshop will invite us to use movement and choreography to explore our relationship with spatial architectures in action. 2:30–4:30pm Dialogue II: Inter-disciplinary Lab What happens when we use different practices to explore one set of questions? How can we change habits of interacting and of thinking? Thinking through practices of movement, design, and theory we will consider different and interlocking approaches to the spaces around us and how we inhabit them. A hands-on dialogue with conversations from guest speakers: Erect Architecture, Invisible Studio, Susanna Clausen (

Children's workshop on learning spaces at Siobhan Davies Dance

Running in parallel to the discussion will be a movement-based discussion workshop for children aged 7 - 11.  Led by  Adesola Akinleye  the children will use choreography to explore the same themes, looking at their ideal learning spaces Architecture and the Responsive Body in Children's Education Panel Discussion with Siobhan Davies, Neil Pinder and Sarah Wigglesworth Join us in our RIBA award-winning studios for a discussion considering the impact that education spaces have on learning, the body and movement How is the privatisation of school spaces impacting on young people’s learning and creatives responses? How does the lack of outdoor space and the pressure on indoor space in schools impact on development and learning? How does an architect include the perspective of a dance artist and choreographer to create an educational space that stimulates creative responses?   These are some of the questions we wil

Up-coming Spring events - quick overview

May 16 th    Middlesex University 3 rd year performance -  Arts Depot  https://www.artsdepot.co.uk/dance/mdx-dances-0 May 17 th   Beyond Buildings: performance and architecture -  Royal Academy of Art  https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/event/beyond-buildings-performance-as-architecture-awards-week-talk June 15 th   Learning Environments -  Whitechapel Art Gallery https://www.whitechapelgallery.org July 5 th   Africa Writes: our bodies speak poetry - The British Library http://africawrites.org/uncategorized/our-bodies-speak-poetry-meet-the-poets/ More detail: May 16 th    Middlesex University 3 rd year performance - Arts Depot  https://www.artsdepot.co.uk/dance/mdx-dances-0   Middlesex University graduating Dance students return for their  final  performance of the year. The programme includes repertory by Ross McKim re-staged by Sian Hopkins, plus new works created by Adesola Akinleye, Christopher Tudor and  clearly  Dias Dos Santos.  May 17 th   Beyond

Performance and Architecture: May 17th 6:30pm

Royal Academy of Art: Join us for a panel discussion looking at the performative side of architecture – learn more about how an active arts practice can develop and drive spatial ideas. Adesola will be exploring her on-going work on how to share ideas about embodiment without just talking about it.. " I'll have a side of choreography with that, please "! https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/event/beyond-buildings-performance-as-architecture-awards-week-talk

Choreographing the City dance exploration week. April 20th Event

April 20th we will be sharing the exploration and ideas of our first of two dance residencies this year with Theatrum Mundi about how the city is engineered to moves, Urban design, and dancing architecture.  April 20th 2019 workshop will be at the Place [Studio 3] Book here  11.00 - 13.00 session 14.00 - 16.00 session Where:  The Place, 17 Duke's Road, London WC1H 9PY  - Studio 3 *note: Please could you arrive to The Place via the Flaxman Terrace entrance. When:  AM workshop 11am to 1pm  PM workshop 2pm to 4pm             * you are welcome to stay for both or just attend one. What: Movement warm-up, Discussion, movement exploration , sharing of dance created during residency week.  (Bring comfortable clothes that you can move in)

Per/Forming Futures Conference & Workshop April 11th

Workshop led by Dr Adesola Akinleye at  Per/forming Futures - curated by Artistic Doctorates in Europe :  Geography of the Body: Choreo-thinking, physical equations, and a language of choreography Per/Forming Futures launches ADiE’s two most recent publications: Adesola has a chapter in the second Researching in/as Motion A Resource Collection. Reconsidering Research and Supervision as Creative Embodied Creative Practice: Reflections from the Field www.artisticdoctorates.com Researching (in/as) Motion A Resource Collection nivel.teak.fi/adie/ This workshop will playfully explore on the moving body (choreography) as a mode of ‘analysis': thinking in the act of doing. We will use practical movement-based explorations as a process of unpicking embodied metaphor in everyday language (and t herefore in everyday constructs of ‘things’). The goal of the workshop is to share techniques for blurring the divide between theoretical and the physical of doing. A fun, exploratory wor

Choreographing the City with TM: Dance and City Planning

Pleased to announce Dr. Adesola Akinleye has been awarded a Fellowship with Theatrum Mundi.  I will be keeping a 'scrap-book of thinking' at choreographing.city .  What is it about: I feel there is a great importance to creating spaces for the wordless conversation of dance. A conversation that is between body and environment. I hope to contribute to larger discussions across subject areas. This articulating and valuing the significance of where Self begins, or ends or is continuous in environment shares inquiry with colleagues in architecture (see Pallasmaa, 2005, Rasmussen, 1959), social sciences (see Deleuze and Guattari, 1983, 1987), and geography (see Lefebvre, 2004). I hope by reaching beyond the isolating notion of ‘subject’ areas we might find shared areas of inquiry into the inter-connectedness of Place . - Adesola  photo by  Foteini Christofilopoulou   Adesola Akinleye & Bree Birr de Oliveira

workshopping - Thinking about heritage and dance

February 9th  I am ran a triip workshop  thinking about Heritage and Dance. As dancers what do we see as our dance heritage, lineage? Some dance forms feel like 'home' to individual dancers. A form of movement where there is a sense of authentic voice, where the dancer feels the technique itself paves a language they can express there inner sensations with. As a choreographer I look to find a place between the dancers movement home (their voice) and my own from which the movement and the choreographic decision making is coming from. This between space is the manifestation of the dance: a conversation with Place, time, history, present, and past in body. I am thinking about ballet (one of the movement languages I feel a home in) and how it is made a heritage site. A heritage site my voice (as a Black Ballet dancer) is not always present in. What do the other dancers in the workshop feel about their dance 'homes' - I am interested in thinking about using heritage as

Review of Light Steps 'Well, what a warm hug of a show this was'

" what a warm hug of a show this was.." A lovely review of ' Light Steps'  our show for early years. Performance on February 2nd 2019 at  CIRCOMEDIA.  Part of a project that is also about making a resource for Reception and Early years children to support them engaging with live dance. See below for why I make dance for young audiences... See full review  Here "When I dance, I am aware of the transaction of my emplacement: in community with that around me. Dance narrates the somatic experience of emplacement, the sense of  being a part of everywhere. Inherent in watching the professional dancers’ and musicians’ performance of ‘Light Steps’ (and other works I have made for young audiences) is the notion that dance would offer the young   audience languages where responses to the experienced are bodily – moving away from the verbal of words to the expression of the somatic. The professional dancers and   musicians model moving  in ,  through

Book tour with H Patten and Namron

We presented a panel discussion at IABD in Ohio USA about the book Narratives in Black British Dance : Dr. Adesola Akinleye, H Patten and Namron with moderation from Mercy Nabirye and support from One Dance UK and Middlesex University. H and Adesola were then on a panel about internationalism with Thomas Talawa Presto and Robert Soloman. Adesola was also on a panel about dance writing (Black Dance Magazine) moderated by Norma Porter. Following that H and Adesola gave guest lectures at University of Michigan, MI and Adesola also held a guest lecture at the Boston Conservatory, MA. A lot of fun and driving in the snow!!