A workshop exploring connections and overlaps between Stella Subbiah’s Bharatnatyam dance/performance practices and Heni Hale’s somatic trainings.
This is an opportunity to experience two differing approaches that develop movement and technical performance skills, paying attention to emotional processing, imagination, multiplicity of meaning, and commitment to being present.
The day will include movement investigation using imagery drawing from experiential anatomy and mover/witness practices, followed by a study of some Bharatnatyam forms. Creative tasks will draw from an image proposed by Stella of Yama, god of death and justice, who carries souls of the world on a buffalo, and from the music of Gustav Holst and his chamber opera Sāvitri.The aim is to offer a reflective and discursive opportunity to discover how the two approaches intersect.
This free workshop is intended for teaching artists with both, none or plentiful experience of Bharatnatyam or somatic approaches. It forms part of Teachers’ Rehab ’22, a programme curated by Beatrice Ghezzi and Orley Quick of BOTH Dance Classes which is intended for experienced teaching artists aged 30+.
For more about the programme and how to get involved, please visit BOTH Dance here
Stella Subbiah is a Bharatnatyam dancer with over thirty years’ experience as a performer, choreographer and teacher. She trained at Kalakshetra College of Fine Arts in Chennai and performed with their company for 16 years before moving to the UK in 1993. She founded the performing company and training organisation Sankalpam as co-artistic director and choreographer in 1995, researching and creating seven full-length works and shorter works under their umbrella. Sankalpam was the main vehicle for her investigation of Bharatnatyam as a contemporary creative force for nearly twenty years.
Stella has also lectured and set up Syllabuses and courses at London School of Contemporary Dance, Erasmus Scholar at the universities of Roehampton, Groningen and Surrey, where she taught as an Associate Lecturer on the Contemporary Dance BA module.
Henrietta Hale joined ID as co-director in 2018. She steers the overall artistic direction and develops the year-round programme in collaboration with the team, artists and partner organisations. She is also Lead Tutor on MA Creative Practice: Dance Professional.
Independently, Heni works as a choreographer, performer, researcher and educator in diverse contexts with a collaborative focus. Much of her work has been realised as co-director of collective Dog Kennel Hill Project. They produce work for theatres, screen, galleries and non-traditional sites in the UK and internationally. She was a regular lecturer at Trinity Laban Conservatoire for Music and Dance (2002-13).
BOTH is made up of Beatrice Ghezzi and Orley Quick. They trained at LABAN in the same year and then spent many years teaching alongside each other at Lewisham College (which was previously and historically one of London’s leading institutions for vocational dance training). They found they shared a complementary teaching formula that worked, enabling students to go on to dance schools, dance employment or to build life skills through dance.
With their shared teaching ethos and values, they have a deep respect for each other and revel in being students in each other’s classes as well as building on a shared-practice that they enjoy developing. They are passionate about teaching, love the people they meet in their classes and adore working together. Their complementary and yet different approaches are a strong combination for providing rounded training.
BOTH is their teaching initiative that is the result of these years together as fellow students, performers and teachers. BOTH has officially been running since October 2018.