The Speaking Dancer: Interdisciplinary Performance Training

Programme Director: Jacky Lansley (Artistic Director, Dance Research Studio)
Guest tutors have included: Anne Bean (Installation and Performance artist), Sally E. Dean (Interdisciplinary & Somatic Practitioner), Fergus Early (Green Candle Dance Company), Rose English (Visual & Performance artist), Anna Furse (Performance artist & Director of MA Performance Making at Goldsmiths), Sylvia Hallett (Musician & Composer), Alexandrina Hemsley (Dance Artist/Project O), Esther Huss (Choreographer & Performance Artist), Jamila Johnson Small (Dance Artist/Project O), Tony Thatcher (Choreographer & Programme Leader, MA Choreography at Trinity Laban), Lily Susan Todd (Writer & Theatre Director) and Sally Williams (Performance & Artistic director of Sea Scape). 

The Speaking Dancer is a unique and outstanding professional development programme that supports the artist as performer and devisor/choreographer. SDIPT offers students coming from a professional and or performing arts degree background the opportunity to rethink their relationship to their practice, and develop new processes and skills. The programme consists of four modules taken over intensive weekend workshops with an exceptional faculty of tutors.

“Taking this programme has been absolutely pivotal to my development as a performing artist. I feel like I have found my niche! Dance Research Studio is a unique environment and offers something so different to anything I have experienced at university or in other performance courses.” – SDIPT student

“The constant making of small solos and then working with another one or more people and the sharing/performing has been really wonderful for me. It has been a reminder of skills I have, of the pleasure and power I experience performing, and it’s been very affirming.”  – SDIPT student 

Course Information

MODULE 1: The Interdisciplinary Performer (Voice and Movement Integration)

This module will lay down foundation techniques which underpin the whole programme. Participants will be introduced to core principles of release work and anatomical imagery which integrate movement, breath and voice and to strategies which enable awareness of personal patterns.

MODULE 2: Improvisation and Emotional Embodiment

Through creative play and the integration of body mind and voice, this module will introduce and develop improvisation skills for solo and ensemble work. Participants will explore how to follow impulse within improvisation, work with autobiographical memory towards emotional embodiment, and translate visual and narrative stimulus into movement language.

MODULE 3: Visual Language and the Performer

This module will focus on the performer’s embodiment of visual ad formal awareness; combining practical research with conceptual training methods. The module will investigate the influence of visual and performance art disciplines and strategies in dance and choreographic practice. Focus will be placed on space and object-hood, shape, gesture and image, and site-specific performance.

MODULE 4: The Choreographic Exchange

This module explores the performer as translator of the choreographic text, and develops strategies for inhabiting and ‘owning’ choreographic material. Participants will create short compositions based on a variety of stimuli, using the group as both performers and audience. This module will provide opportunities for both indoor and outdoor site-specific exploration beyond and within the theatrical context.

Entry Requirements

The programme is open to dancers, actors and performance artists with a graduate or post graduate qualification, and/or three years professional experience in one of the performing arts (can be combined with visual practice).

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