MA/MFA Creative Practice: Dance Professional

As a dancer, Zoi has worked with Kirstie Simson, Yvonne Rainer, Felix Ruckert and Siobhan Davies, among others. She launched her choreographic career in 2006 and her professional portofolio includes, among other works: Can You See Me? (2006), Dromi (2007), Limen (2007), Goddesses in Exile (2008), In The Process of … (2010), Little Creatures (2011), You May! (2012), The Chapter House (2014), Side Effects (2015), Peregrinus (2017), Vanishing Points (2018), When Pillars Evaporate; Work in Progress (2019).

She is the recipient of important UK choreographic awards such as the Robin Howard Foundation Award 2008, the Bonnie Bird Choreography Fund Award 2009 and the CFC Award 2010 by the Company of Angels, Sadler’s Wells and The Place, and has participated in Aerowaves, a well-renowned European Dance Platform. She has received several commissions (eg Greek National Ballet) and her works have been presented at venues/festivals such as: Fast Forward Festival 4, ROH2, Arnolfini, BE Festival, Lilyan Baylis, the Athens and Epidaurus Festival, the Kalamata International Dance Festival, Operaestate Veneto Festival at the Scala of Milan, Europe in Motion Festival and Springloaded at The Place.

She has participated in several international European Dance Research programs such as the Choreoroam, Big Intensive, Europe in Motion, and she is funded/commissioned by institutions such as the Arts Council England, the Hellenic Centre for theater and dance, the Onassis Cultural Centre, among others. She is a Research Fellow at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London and teaches internationally at institutions/festivals such as: Impulstanz Festival, Sasha Waltz Company, Independent Dance, National Dance Academy of Rome, Athens State School of Dance (KSOT) among others.

Her research is focused on notions of time and the passing of images. It reflects the direction of her practice away from the conventional theatre space and towards off-site installations and interactivity, investigates the qualities and conditions of spectatorship, and draws from the larger social for the development of choreographic activity.

Henrietta has a 25 year dance artist practice, most significantly as founder member of collective Dog Kennel Hill Project (DKHP) since 2004. DKHP produce performance research work across theatre, gallery, screen and unusual sites, within a range of producing partnerships such as Whitechapel Gallery, Dance Umbrella, and Brighton CCA.  

Roles as a dancer/collaborator from late 90s onwards include Ricochet Dance Productions and Rosemary Lee projects and movement direction with visual artists. She has taught regularly in higher education undergraduate contexts, significantly Trinity Laban (2002 – 2013). 

Since 2020, she has been leading the module Writing the Body that explores interdisciplinary and embodied approaches to writing for the MA Creative Practice at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance where she also supervises MA and MFA projects. This year, she will teach a 3-week intensive to MA Choreography students as well.

Vanio has worked extensively at Rose Bruford College since 2011 as the principal movement tutor in the BA European Theatre Arts and has contributed to other modules and supervised practical and written dissertations. She was recently appointed as Module Year Coordinator in the same course. She has convened the Research Methodologies unit at the MA Ensemble Theatre (2014 – 2018) and has coordinated the IRP projects for the MA Actor Performer Training (2021, 2022).

Vanio has taught physical and ensemble theatre at Goldsmiths (2009-2022) and has worked as a movement and dance tutor in various other Higher Education Institutions including LAMDA and Middlesex University.

After training as an actor and a dancer in Greece and the UK, she embarked on her Practice as research (PhD, Goldsmiths, 2013, funded by Greek State Institution of scholarships) into the Post-Grotowskian theatre tradition and Contact Improvisation as part of which she worked with the award-winning company Song of the Goat Theatre (Poland). She has studied internationally with various inspirational theatre and dance practitioners including Farm in the Cave (Czech Republic), Studio Matejka (Poland), Meg Stuart (UK), Nancy Stark Smith (UK/Spain), Charlie Morrissey (UK/Malta), Kirstie Simson (UK), and Simonetta Alessandri (UK). In 2022, Vanio became a Fellow of Higher Education Academy.

As a performer, she has worked for an eclectic mix of artists (Theatre Lab, Athletes of the Heart Lab, Song of the Goat Theatre, Angela Woodhouse, aswespeakproject, Nesreen Nabil Hussein). She has co-created with artist and dramatherapist Tania Batzoglou the performance ritual project titled CANDID that reflects on how female friendships evolve over time. She has led intergenerational projects for women that combine yoga, movement, and writing. Vanio’s work engages with issues of vulnerability, memory and candidness fusing physicality, video, autobiography and text into poetic, surreal and immersive environments and it has been shown in Greece, UK, Italy, Poland, Germany, Egypt and Lebanon.

Research Interests:

• Movement (somatic movement, Contact Improvisation, experiential anatomy, Laban/Bartenieff fundamentals, yoga, release-based dance, expressive movement, improvisation).
• Physical Theatre (Eastern European ensemble theatre; European dance theatre).
• Intersections between dance and theatre training and devising.
• History and Theory of 20th and 21st Century European and American performance practice.
• Critical perspectives: Phenomenology, ecology, feminism, postmodernism.
• Embodied approaches to moving and writing.
• Tools for practice as research (PaR) methodologies and critical reflective writing.

Qualifications And Background:

Education
2009-2013: Practice Based PhD: ‘Towards a practice of Attunement: An Incorporation of Elements from Song of the Goat Theatre and Contact Improvisation’ / Goldsmiths, University of London & Royal Central School of Speech and Drama

2008: Diploma in Dance / Birkbeck University
2007: MA Performance Making (Distinction) / Goldsmiths, University of London
2004: Diploma in Acting, Drama School of the Odeion Athinon / Athens, Greece

1999-2003: BA in Theatre Studies (First) / National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Other teaching qualifications:
2022: Fellowship Higher Education Academy
2019: 200 hours Yoga Teacher Training (by Yoga on the Lane – Vinyasa flow yoga)

2017 – 18 Fellowship in Accessible Performance Practice (Rose Bruford College)
Movement tutor and movement director with D/deaf or disabled young artists Ensemble 2018 Train: Training Programme, GRAEAE.

Grants and awards:

2010 – 12: Grant by A.G. Leventis Foundation towards doctoral research

2009 – 12: Full-time scholarship by State Scholarship Foundation of Greece (IKY) towards doctoral research

2006 – 07: Full-time scholarship by State Scholarship Foundation of Greece (IKY) towards Master’s studies.

2000 – 01: ERASMUS- SOCRATES FREEMOVER scholarship (IKY) for attendance at the Theatre Studies Department (Paris VIII – Vincennes- St Denis) and Department of History of Arts (Universidad de Salamanca).

Becky also has a choreographic moving image practice, which seeks to deepen the screen application of dance practice. The choreographic concerns of the rhythm, pattern and dynamic flow of movement, are combined with a documentary practice to produce works that are a hybrid of the observed and the constructed. Her short films and installations have been shown at film festivals internationally. She was artist in residence at both Videodanza BA in Argentina and SHOOT Dance for Camera Festival in Sweden. Her feature documentary Turn Your F***ing Head was published by Routledge in 2014.

From 2010 to 2015 Becky worked in collaboration with fellow artist Lucy Cash under the company name of straybird, a platform for co-curated and co-directed projects. straybird developed and produced a number of innovative projects including the curation of the What If… and What Matters festivals at Siobhan Davies Studios, Small Matters and Stray Gifts (to be claimed by whoever shall find) at Dance Umbrella, two films for the Siobhan Davies Space (Seven Ways South and Walker), as well as What Matters, a short documentary for Arts Council England, which was shown as the opening film at SOTA 2012.

Becky teaches screendance and moving image practice at a range of instituions and is an associate artist with Blast Theory.

As an academic and teacher her aim is to enable understanding through demystification of bodily and artistic processes. This is engendered by her knowledge of anatomy and physiology as well as Rudolf Laban’s praxis and supported by her creative practice. She is the author of the Essential Guide to Contemporary Dance Techniques published by Crowood in 2020. Her research encompasses choreographic practice and movement analysis; she recently presented with Lizzi Kew Ross on the material of process at the Craft and Art Symposium in London (Feb 2020). She is a specialist in Labanotation and a fellow of the International Council of Kinetography Laban. She has presented papers at conferences around Laban Praxis and contributed to Preston-Dunlop (2013) Laban Man of Theatre. Dance Books: London. Among others, she has scored Yvonne Rainer’s Trio A (with Jouke Kolff) which she has also reconstructed for educational proposes and also for the MOVE: Choreographing You exhibition at the Hayward Gallery London in 2010.

Her choreographic work includes independent solo and group works and commissions: Presenting 16 original works in Britain and internationally between 1999-2019.

Qualifications and Educational Background

Melanie Clarke is an alum of Trinity Laban graduating with a BA Honours Dance Theatre degree and a MA degree in Dance Studies focusing on Dance in Education, Dance Documentation and Reconstruction, and Choreography. After passing with Distinction Melanie joined the Trinity Laban faculty.

She is an accredited External Examiner (AdvanceHE) and has undertaken this role for Greenwich University and Suffolk University.