DancingStrong Movement Lab. news

    New Season of Open Classes on Zoom from October! Join Helen Kindred for guided improvisation classes every week   THURSDAY 7.30-8.15PM (GMT) FREE and open to all!     ZOOM LINKS posted each week on Instagram follow us  @dancingstrong_movement_lab_  @helenkindred

C onquering parameters: a scherzo for pandemical times  This exciting Associate Artist project has grasped summer 2020 and made art out of it, across the lock-down.  There will be a  presentation  of the work with partners London Studio  Centre.  Presented - Friday 16 October, 7pm (TBC). This will be through London Studio Centre's Instagram account.

 New Season of Open Classes on Zoom from October! Join Helen Kindred for guided improvisation classes every week   THURSDAY 7.30-8.15PM (GMT) FREE and open to all!     ZOOM LINKS posted each week on Instagram follow us  @dancingstrong_movement_lab_  @helenkindred

 Pod Cast In Conversation Richard Sennett and Adesola Akinleye  Theatrum Mundi · Silence and Stillness: In Conversation with Richard Sennett and Adesola Akinleye

Queering the Somatic In November 2019  Dr. Adesola Akinleye  and  Helen Kindred , co-Artistic Directors of DancingStrong Movement Lab and Senior Lecturers at Middlesex University London, curated a two-day symposium - Queering the Somatic: interrupting the narrative - which brought together artists, practitioners, researchers moving within the fields of dance, queer theory, feminism, narrative, and somatic practices. Here they introduce the following articles which are contributed by some of the Symposium’s speakers.  https://www.communitydance.org.uk/DB/animated-editions/summer-2020 See our editorial here:  https://www.communitydance.org.uk/DB/animated-library/queering-the-somatic?ed=44830  See Helen's article here:  https://www.communitydance.org.uk/DB/animated-library/improvisation-and-change?ed=44830 Our sincere thanks to all the contributors to this edition of Animated: Vicki Igbokwe, Melanie Precious, Sarah Boulton and Adele Wragg, Dr Mark...

In HOTFOOT Online Dr Adesola Akinleye shares her experience at The International Association of Blacks in Dance 32nd International Conference and the joys of international dance communities! 🤩 https://bit.ly/HOTFOOTSpring2020InternationalCommunity

Jojo working on DancingStrong Zoom and Skype rehearsals and classes We have been enjoying developing ways to dance together over the internet.

Helen Kindred work Whispers. Her area of exploration was focused on thoughts on how she could better know her practice of Bartenieff Fundamentals and improvisation. She explains how " I thought I'd develop my understanding of both areas, the relationship between them, be able to argue a case for rigor and structure underpinning improvised dance practice. I have done this, but this journey has been so so much more than this, more than I could ever have imagined.Tonight I present the three improvised performance works that have grown through my research, dancing the in-between-ness with the dear artists, friends, collaborators that have been with me on this journey, holding and sharing space for me to breathe, to process, to be, to live and to love with truth, generosity and honesty."

Choreographing the City Akinleye Research Fellowship: phase two Dr. Adesola Akinleye (DSML Director) and Theatrum Mundi have been working together through the project called Choreographing the City: as/at the city limits. In 2019 Adesola completed the first phase of Research Fellowship with Theatre Mundi. 2020 see the beginning of Phase Two.  Theatrum Mundi helps to expand the crafts of city-making through collaboration between artists and urbanists.  About the project: Due to rapid current pressures such as globalisation, climate change, and urbanisation, there are ongoing growing pressures on our current infrastructures in cities. Therefore, we  need radical approaches to engineering that challenge our assumptions of what can be achieved...d ance can potentially provide us with some answers. Choreography and engineering design are both creative processes that are taught formally, developed through practice and experience, have known outputs, physical an...

Adesola Will be speaking/dancing as part of Concrete and Ink. She will be playing with notions of time and body, environment... 13 February 2020 – 15 February 2020 Place Whitechapel Gallery City London Project Enactments Format Panel Discussion , Screening With Marta Michalowska Justinien Tribillon Jasmina Cibic Alison Irvine Christopher Ian Smith Kate Harding Emmanuelle Chiappone-Piriou Gwenaëlle d'Aboville Nina Leger Océane Ragoucy Jodie Azhar Crystal Bennes Corina Angheloiu Meneesha Kellay Julian Baggini Sophie Mackintosh Gruia Bădescu https://theatrum-mundi.org/programme/concrete-ink/

DancingStrong has just completed its 10th year. Today also marks the celebration of our recent success in achieving a new status for our company. The company is now a registered CIC (Community Interest Company)  and will now officially be called- DancingStrong Movement Lab CIC (previously named - DancingStrong) Co- Directors: Adesola Akinleye (left) and Helen Kindred (right)

Adesola recently wrote a blog post responding to a 2-day workshop On Attention Ten philosophers and ten dancers walk into a room in London… Curated by Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca and Heni Hale, on November 29th and 30th 2019, we came together at ID to share a series of workshops and discussions that focused around the notion of attention: ‘ On Attention: A Performance Philosophy Workshop ’ . The event resonated with and addressed how we pay attention to each other – how do we share practices and across practices? How do interdisciplinary approaches make spaces for the multiple threads that different practices offer an idea? For me, this exploration of building frameworks for how ‘we’ come together, (how we pay attention to each other meaningfully) is important work. On a macro, global level, it reflects the 21st century’s call to understand and find equality in the process of coming together that is globalisation. On a micro, practice level, it is part of the problem-solving proce...

DancingStrong Movement Lab members Helen Kindred and Maga Judd are performing a work at Resolutions 2020.

Join us at the annual The International Association of Blacks in Dance Conference. Hosted by Joan Myer Brown/ Philadanco (Philadelphia Dance Company) in Philadelphia, PA. We will have our roundtable discussion entitled "Collective Strategies for Diasporan Women in Dance" on Saturday, January 18th, 2020 from 2:00-4:00 pm EST The panel in includes: Brenda Dixon Gottschild Ph.D. (Moderator), Quanice G. Floyd, Adesola Akinleye Ph.D., Maria Bauman-Morales, Pawlet Brookes, and S Ama Wray Ph.D. To sign up for the conference, please check out IABD Association website at www.iabdassociation.org

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. 

     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 sl...

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...

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...

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

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