Project Y Performance Course
Anna Kenrick
Anna trained at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance before working with the Education Team at The Place, London, Magpie Dance Company, Anjali Dance Company and teaching for many different schools and organisations across the UK as a choreographer, teacher and facilitator. In 2002 Anna joined Ludus Dance Company where she worked as both a dancer and teacher. She performed in UK and international tours of ‘Perfecting Eugene‘, ‘Trapped‘ and ‘Zygote,‘ working with choreographers Rosie Kay, Filip Van Huffel and Hanna Gillgren. She joined YDance in 2007 as Project Director for the Free to Dance project as well as a choreographer for a number of projects including Project Y where she has choregraphed 10 new works to date touring across the country.
In 2011 Anna was appointed as Artistic Director of YDance and has gone on to create and choreograph new works for the National Youth Dance Company of Scotland – ‘A Million Eyes on You‘ (2012), ‘If I Told You‘ (2014), ‘Stuck in My Throat‘ (2015), ‘Maelstrom‘ (2016) ‘Di-ver-gent‘ (2018), ‘For Those Who Wait‘ (2019) and 'Beneath Words' (2020). All these pieces have toured nationally across the UK and internationally to Australia, Belgium, India, Ireland and France. She has co-choregraphed pieces across the world in Australia, Belgium and France with Filip Van Huffel, Josette Baiz, Jayden Hicks and Ruth Osbourne for international exchange projects.
Anna has been commissioned to create outdoor and indoor pieces for the cultural programmes for the 2012 Olympics, the 2014 Commonwealth Games and the 2015 World Gymnastics Championships as well as directing and programming the first ever Commonwealth Youth Dance Festival in 2014. In 2018 Anna choreographed and directed a large scale intergenerational project, ‘Generation Dance Festival‘ in partnership with Scottish Ballet and choregraphed a collaborative production ‘Tell Us Who We Are‘ with the National Youth Choir of Scotland, National Youth Orchestras of Scotland and Scottish Youth Theatre.
Anna is a coach and mentor for the Federation of Scottish Theatre and works as a visiting assessor and sits on the qualifications design team for dance for the Scottish Qualifications Authority.
Anna Kenrick
Anna trained at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance before working with the Education Team at The Place, London, Magpie Dance Company, Anjali Dance Company and teaching for many different schools and organisations across the UK as a choreographer, teacher and facilitator. In 2002 Anna joined Ludus Dance Company where she worked as both a dancer and teacher. She performed in UK and international tours of ‘Perfecting Eugene‘, ‘Trapped‘ and ‘Zygote,‘ working with choreographers Rosie Kay, Filip Van Huffel and Hanna Gillgren. She joined YDance in 2007 as Project Director for the Free to Dance project as well as a choreographer for a number of projects including Project Y where she has choregraphed 10 new works to date touring across the country.
In 2011 Anna was appointed as Artistic Director of YDance and has gone on to create and choreograph new works for the National Youth Dance Company of Scotland – ‘A Million Eyes on You‘ (2012), ‘If I Told You‘ (2014), ‘Stuck in My Throat‘ (2015), ‘Maelstrom‘ (2016) ‘Di-ver-gent‘ (2018), ‘For Those Who Wait‘ (2019) and 'Beneath Words' (2020). All these pieces have toured nationally across the UK and internationally to Australia, Belgium, India, Ireland and France. She has co-choregraphed pieces across the world in Australia, Belgium and France with Filip Van Huffel, Josette Baiz, Jayden Hicks and Ruth Osbourne for international exchange projects.
Anna has been commissioned to create outdoor and indoor pieces for the cultural programmes for the 2012 Olympics, the 2014 Commonwealth Games and the 2015 World Gymnastics Championships as well as directing and programming the first ever Commonwealth Youth Dance Festival in 2014. In 2018 Anna choreographed and directed a large scale intergenerational project, ‘Generation Dance Festival‘ in partnership with Scottish Ballet and choregraphed a collaborative production ‘Tell Us Who We Are‘ with the National Youth Choir of Scotland, National Youth Orchestras of Scotland and Scottish Youth Theatre.
Anna is a coach and mentor for the Federation of Scottish Theatre and works as a visiting assessor and sits on the qualifications design team for dance for the Scottish Qualifications Authority.
Sandrine Monin
Born in France, Sandrine began her training at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Dance de Lyon. She then pursued her studies in Germany as part of the European programme D.A.N.C.E led by Forsythe, McGregor, Preljocaj and Flamand, and graduated from Palucca Hochschule Dresden with a Masters degree.
As a professional dancer she worked with various choreographers and performed around Europe and the UK for renowned companies Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz and Phoenix Dance Theatre.
Parallel to her performing career she has also developed her own choreographic work, creating independent work as well as work for companies, youth groups and music videos. She also teaches classes and workshops.
In 2017, she was a selected artist for the Mentoring Programme and the Choreographers Observership with One Dance UK.
She is now based in Leeds working as freelance dance artist and choreographer. Constantly looking for ways of deepening her practice, she is currently studying for a MA in Choreography with the Central School of Ballet.
Emma Jayne Park
Emma Jayne Park works under the creative handle Cultured Mongrel as a dancer, theatre maker, collaborator and micro-activist. She asks questions and is obsessed with asking better questions. From creating dance with young dancers in rural community spaces to working as a movement director in established mid-scale theatres, her politics always underline her practice with a focus on creating healthy working spaces, questioning hierarchies, collaborative working and aspiring to positive social change. Her research focuses on bridging the gap between ideology and practice, exploring themes including identity, communication, failure, re-authorship and creative ownership.
Recently Emma has participated in both the Push and Push Plus Creative Europe Cooperation Project, attending Artists Labs focusing on Gender and Sexuality in Theatre for Young Audiences and Failure; received the BENCH Commission 2016 to develop ‘It’s Not Over Yet’, directed by Charlotte Vincent; worked as an Artist in Residence with Edinburgh International Festival at Leith Academy and is currently the driving force behind developing a regional Youth Dance Company and associated Touring Network for Dance in Dumfries and Galloway. In 2020 Emma will undertake an Associateship Pilot Scheme with Scottish Dance Theatre.
Photo: Suzanne Livingstone
Jessie Roberts-Smith
Jessie is a full-time dancer with Scottish Dance Theatre based in Dundee, Scotland. She is currently touring work by Sharon Eyal, Emmanuel Gat, Colette Sadler and Botis Seva, and is developing ‘So Long and Slender’, her own work made in 2019 with fellow dancer Luigi Nardone. During her time with SDT she also performed work by Damian Jalet, Anton Lachky and Fleur Darkin. Jessie also teaches and dances with a wide range of professional, community and recreational dance groups.
Her dancing began in flamenco shoes at the back of her mum’s classes and continued at The Place in London with the Centre for Advanced Training and Shift Youth Dance Company. She completed her BA Hons at The London Contemporary School and the Danish National School of Performing Arts.
During her training she worked with a number of choreographers including Luca Silvetrini, Hofesh Shechter, Kerry Nichols, Lea Andeson, H2Dance and Ben Duke.
She loves watching, performing and making dance, and is passionate about the mysterious ways it deals with the unexplainable and the true, and the ways it affects and infects people. When Jessie isn’t dancing, she likes to be sitting in theatres, drawing in art galleries, running through woods, sailing the seas and reading about art.
She is extremely excited about making work with Project Y this year!
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Project Y 2019
Tony Adigun
Tony Adigun is an award-winning choreographer, dancer, creative director, curator, educator, and mentor. He started his career in the commercial dance industry where he choreographed and toured with big personalities like Janet Jackson, Usher, Ashanti, Mel B, JoJo, Cheryl Cole, Paloma Faith and Whitney Houston. Later on, this led him into working for brands and TV roles, taking the spot as Creative Director of Sky One’s ‘Got To Dance’. He has also worked with commercial giants such as Cirque Du Soleil, Nike, Adidas, and the BBC and has obtained international success.
Currently, he is positioned as Work Place Artist at The Place and at the same time, the founder and artistic director of the progressive hip-hop company “Avant Garde Dance”. He has gained respect and admiration from the highest echelons of the dance industry keeping virtuosity, integrity and musicality as his core creative components. Music is his first passion and it is his proficiency in sound that develops into movement and choreography. He continues to challenge audiences and is resolute in his belief that young people of any background can reach the highest level.
Christine Devaney
Born in Glasgow, Christine Devaney trained at London Contemporary Dance School and has been performing, choreographing and teaching throughout her extensive career, which started with Dundee Rep Dance Company (Scottish Dance Theatre). Her work spans across dance and theatre. She performed and was associate director with V-tol Dance Company for 9 years, and since 2005 has been Artistic Director of Edinburgh-based dance theatre company, Curious Seed. Other companies she has worked with include: Plan B, Quarantine, Frantic Assembly, Yolander Snaith Theatre Dance, TAG, The Unicorn, Catherine Wheels Theatre Company and Lung Ha Theatre Company. Her work for The National Theatre of Scotland includes movement direction on their production of Macbeth (2012, Broadway run 2013), The Wheel (2011), and co-directing the award-winning Venus as a Boy (2007). Christine was an Associate Artist with Imaginate from 2011-2013.
Rosie Kay
Rosie Kay (BA Hons) FRSA, MCR St Cross College, Oxford, born in Scotland, danced from a very early age, then trained at London Contemporary Dance School, graduating in 1998, before a career as a dancer in Poland, France, Germany and the USA. Kay returned to the UK in 2003 and set up Rosie Kay Dance Company in Birmingham in 2004.
Kay's works include the multi-award-winning work 5 Soldiers - the Body is the Frontline (2010/15) based on intense research with the British Army and screened live online by BBC Arts as part of the programme at Sadlers Wells 2017, MK Ultra (2017/18) the pop conspiracy work made with BBC film-maker Adam Curtis, and other works such as Motel (2016) a collaboration with visual artists Huntley Muir, Sluts of Possession (2013) created with rare archive material from the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, There is Hope (2012) exploring religion, Double Points: K (2008) a collaboration with Emio Greco| PC and Asylum (2005) based on research with asylum seekers. Kay recently choreographed the live BBC Commonwealth Games Handover Ceremony, watched by over 1 billion people worldwide and has worked in film as the choreographer to the feature film Sunshine on Leith (2013).
Outdoor works include Modern Warrior (2017) based on vintage martial arts films and is touring outdoor festivals, Haining Dreaming (2013) in the Scottish Borders, and The Great Train Dance (2011) on the Severn Valley Railway as part of London 2012. Kay has worked with The Birmingham REP Theatre as Associate Director to the large-scale work Woyzeck (2018) with Roxanna Silbert, Birmingham International Dance Festival and Birmingham Royal Ballet. Kay was the first choreographer appointed Leverhulme Artist in Residence at the School of Anthropology, University of Oxford (2013). Awards for her work include Best Independent Company (2015) and nominated for Best Choreography for 5 Soldiers (2015), National Dance Awards and nominated for Best Independent Company 2012 and 2017, a Royal Society for Public Health Award for support to military communities, and the Bonnie Bird New Choreography Award. Kay has a four-year old son and lives in Birmingham with her film-maker husband.
Thomas Small
Thomas is a multi-award-winning choreographer, Artistic Director of Shaper/Caper based in Dundee, and he is the first ever BBC Radio 2 Artist in Residence. In 2013, he was awarded the Creative Scotland fellowship on the coveted Clore Leadership Programme. Thomas was Choreographer in Residence at The Space throughout 2008 and Artist in Residence at The Byre Theatre for 4 years.
His critically acclaimed work ‘Within This Dust’ was part of the Made in Scotland showcase in 2012 and has since been presented nationally across the UK and internationally in Berlin, Belgium, Sao Paulo and New York. It was shown to sold out audiences at the 9/11 Memorial Museum at ground zero in NYC in April 2017. In 2018, Thomas was commissioned to choreograph the opening of the V&A Dundee featuring a cast of 500 young people alongside 8 professional dancers and dancers from Scottish Ballet for an audience of 10k people and broadcast on BBC2.
Thomas is a Lecturer at Scottish School of Contemporary Dance, a Trustee at The Barn and Co-Chair of Dundee Pride.
For more information about Thomas, please visit www.shapercaper.com.
Photo credits: Headshot by Dylan Drummond.
Project Y 2018
Richard Chappell
Richard Chappell is an internationally renowned choreographer and performer. After training on The Royal Ballet School's Associate Programme, Richard continued to study at Tring Park School before undertaking a BA Hons Degree at Rambert School. Whilst training, Richard started developing his choreography for the National Youth Ballet (Sadler's Wells) and Youth Dance England's Young Creatives Scheme (Royal Opera House).
Since 2013, Richard has lead his own company under the name Richard Chappell Dance and his inaugural double bill IRIS and The Vast Rocks toured 2013 to 2016. In 2017, Richard created his first full length work At the end we begin on Studio, Wayne McGregor's FreeSpace program, which tours extensively throughout 2018. Through RCD, Richard created short dance film Moments in 360 (2015), for viewing in virtual reality on Oculus Rift.
As a guest choreographer, Richard has created works for Stuttgart Ballet, English National Ballet, Frontier Danceland (Singapore), Trinity Laban's Transitions Dance Company, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (Singapore), BalletWorks, Chichester University and the National Youth Ballet of Great Britain. Richard has lead choreographic workshops for School of the Arts Singapore, Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance, Northern School of Contemporary Dance, ArtEz Institute of the Arts (Holland) and Lasalle College of the Arts, amongst others.
James Cousins
James has been recognised by Time Out magazine as one of the future faces of dance, called ‘a rising star’ by The Independent and described by Matthew Bourne as ‘one of the UK’s most promising choreographic talents’.
In 2012, he was the winner of the inaugural New Adventures Choreographer Award, selected by Matthew Bourne for his ‘refreshing desire to entertain’. The award culminated in a sold-out performance at Sadler’s Wells, London, where his work was critically acclaimed as ‘outstanding’, ‘visually breath-taking’ and ‘spellbindingly beautiful’.
After the showcase he formed James Cousins Company with producer Francesca Moseley, to act as a vehicle for creating and performing his work, touring to popular and critical acclaim both nationally and internationally from South America to East Asia.
As a freelance choreographer James has been commissioned to create work for companies around the world including National Ballet of Chile, Oper Graz, Royal Ballet of Flanders and Scottish Ballet as well as commercial projects with Anne-Marie, Nadav Kander and Impulse.
James is a Work Place artist at The Place and in summer 2015 he was selected to be a part of Sadler’s Wells’ four-year Summer University programme.
Anna Kenrick
See bio above.
Sophie Laplane
Heralded as “A major talent in the making”, Franco-British-choreographer
Sophie Laplane honed her choreographic skills under the leadership of the
Scottish Ballet CEO/Director Christopher Hampson.
Her first short work Oxymore was showcased at the The Edinburgh Festival
2013. Its punchy, quirky style was hailed as an immediate success by the critics and was featured at the 2015 TedX Glasgow event. She has since presented a number of works for Scottish Ballet in large scale theatres in Scotland, and internationally.
Her critically acclaimed work, Maze, which premiered as part of a Scottish
Ballet Triple Bill, was later adapted for film and shot on location by director
Eve McConnachie in the now derelict Govanhill Swimming Baths. It won the
Best Screen Dance Short (Under 10 minutes) at the 2015 San Francisco
Dance Film Festival. Her richly textured, unpredictable style is further defined in her acclaimed piece, Sibilo, which featured alongside Crystal Pite’s
“Emergence” in Scottish Ballet’s 2017 Autumn Tour.
She has further developed her interest in 360°filmed dance with The Perfect
Place in collaboration with the BBC, and has recently presented her work,
The Duel at The 2018 Women in Dance Leadership Conference in New
York. She is currently undertaking an MA in Choreography at Central School
of Ballet, London.
Project Y 2017
Theo Clinkard
Theo Clinkard is a choreographer, dancer and stage designer. Following 20 years performing in work by many of the UK’s most celebrated dance makers, he launched his own company in 2012 to develop a portfolio of work that explores the communicative potential of the body and the empathetic nature of dance in performance.
His dance company have toured extensively across the UK and internationally and received invites to present at prestigious industry events, British Dance Edition (Edinburgh & Cardiff) and Internationale Tanzmesse NRW 2016 in Dusseldorf. His most recent work This Bright Field premiered at Brighton Dome Concert Hall as part of the Brighton Festival.
Clinkard has recently undertaken a range of high-profile international commissions including Bright Field premiered at Brighton Dome Concert Hall as part of the Brighton Festival. He has recently undertaken a range of high-profile international commissions including Somewhat still when seen from above for Tanztheatre Wuppertal Pina Bausch and The Listening Room for Danza Contemporanea de Cuba which toured across the UK in 2017. He has premiered 24 original dances to date. Clinkard is an Associate Artist at Brighton Dome, Dance4 and Greenwich Dance and a patron of Plymouth Dance.
Alan Greig
Alan Greig trained in London at the Laban Centre and Central School of Ballet. He spent a year in New York City as a scholarship student of seminal choreographer Alwin Nikolais. He has since taught, choreographed and performed extensively in the UK. In 1990 he formed Alan Greig Dance Theatre (formally X Factor Dance Company) of which he is the Artistic Director.
Alan Greig Dance Theatre has performed throughout Scotland and the UK and has staged international performances in Germany, New York and Shanghai. Recent choreographic commissions include Over Soul Tanz Theatre (Ningbo), Tron Theatre (Ulysses), Goucher College (USA), Jin Xing Dance Company (Shanghai) and Northern School of Contemporary Dance. Professional teachings include The British Council (Shanghai), The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts.
Alan has performed with David Hughes Dance The Red Room (2008), Smallpetitklein (2013 and 2014), and award-winning choreographer Janice Parker in Private Dancer (2012), Private Party (2013) and Glory (2014). He graduated in 2009 from the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts with a Master’s Degree (Distinction) in Dance Theatre Practices.
Steven Martin
Steven Martin began training in Scotland in 2003 at the Scottish School of Contemporary Dance.
In 2007, he began teaching community ballet classes at The Space, Dundee, before beginning an apprenticeship with Scottish Dance Theatre through the London Contemporary Dance School. He performed in Sorry for the missiles by Vanessa Haska, Dog by Hofesh Shechter, and two works by Liv Lorent; Tenderhook and Luxuria. He finished his apprenticeship but stayed as a dancer with the company until September 2008.
In 2009, Steven joined Retina Dance Company as a professional dancer for the production of Antipode, followed by Relative Danger, La Lutte and Layers of Skin.
During his professional dance career, Steven has continued to teach internationally and has experience of teaching and choreographing for many age and experience levels. He currently teaches Creative Dance, Youth Ballet, Youth Contemporary, and Adult Contemporary at The Space, Dundee.
Hagit Yakira
Hagit Yakira trained at the Music and Dance Academy in Jerusalem, Israel. She gained further training as a Dance Movement Therapist in 2004 before relocating to London where she completed an MA in European Theatre Dance a year later at Trinity Laban.
In 2007, she set up her dance company developing her personal movement language. At the same time she has been performing and choreographing for other companies and dance institutions, as well as teaching and leading performance projects and workshops for both professional dancers and the community. She is currently undertaking a PhD in Choreography at Trinity Laban.
Since 2007, the company has created and toured seven works gaining critical acclaim from audiences, press and the dance community. It received second prize in the Burgos New York Choreography Competition in 2007 for its first piece Somewhere between a self and another received, and the first prize in the Kojaani Choreography Competition in 2009 for Oh Baby.
Hagit is recognised by her peers, company and students as an extraordinary and inspirational teacher. She teaches across Europe and regularly at The Place and Trinity Laban where she has been guest choreographer since 2011.
