This session is for anyone who would like to explore the creative potential of their body, with others, through gentle tasks, joyous play, and structured improvisations.
You will be invited to connect inwards to sensations, breath, feelings, imagination, and outwards to others through play. You can expect great tunes, soft melodies, dad dancing, and lying down to take it all in.
Jodie’s practice explores moving to music in community as a healing experience. Jodie seeks sensation, connection, silliness and pleasure through moving to music with others and with shared aims. Having experienced physical discomfort and relational fear for most of her adult life, moving and playing with others has been a way to ease out of these experiences.
Jodie Cole (she/her/they) is a working-class choreographer, movement director, facilitator, performer and is the lead artist at Jodie Cole Dance. Inspired by the healing powers of movement to cross social divides, she celebrates difference, uses movement to unite experience & and brings performance to unexpected places.
Jodie has worked internationally in communities, in theatre, and in disability arts settings. She has an MA from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in Movement: Directing and Teaching and trained to level 3 British Sign Language. Currently Jodie runs weekly ‘Open Practice’ sessions in Margate, inspired by Wainsgate Dances, it’s an invitation for all bodies to do their own thing in the company of others, with a playlist of eclectic tunes.
In 2021 she was appointed as Jerwood Creative Fellow with Extraordinary Bodies to develop inclusive practice. A year later, she toured Boogie Booth, a pop-up participatory dance with embedded BSL. In 2023 she was awarded a DYCP research grant in exploring “Class, Collaboration, & Complex PTSD” and she developed “Feel the Beat”, a participatory dance show with embedded audio description playing with sensory ways into dance.
In 2024 she was an associate artist with Arts & Homelessness International exploring her experiences of homelessness in solo dance making. She is currently an associate for the Jerwood Toolkit promoting socio-economic diversity in the arts, working with organisations nationally.
Jodie is an experienced and person-centred facilitator, known for her gentle and joyous approach. She has worked with LAMDA, Mountview, SLiDE, Step into Dance, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Extraordinary Bodies, Diverse City, Camp Bestival, Gecko, New Adventures, and Good Chance Theatre.
Independent Dance is resident at Siobhan Davies Studios. To find out more about accessibility and the amenities available within the building please see here.
If you have any questions about the accessibility of our programme and would like to discuss any specific access requirements, please feel free to reach out to us via email info@independentdance.co.uk or by phone on 0207 091 9665, to speak directly to a member of the Independent Dance team. Alternatively, you may phone the main reception at Siobhan Davies Studios on 0207 091 9650.
During class, all participants are welcome to take breaks, observe, exit and enter the space as they wish. Lounge areas are available on the first and ground floors of the building. Yoga mats, blocks, cushions and ear defenders are available for use. We also welcome you being in contact if you would like to discuss the option of bringing your access support worker. Please speak to a member of the ID team if you require any assistance.
Prices for classes are kept very low and are subsidised by ID in order to support artists to attend. To keep admin manageable for our small team, we don’t offer refunds if you cancel or can’t attend a class, and we can’t transfer your booking to a different class/event. We hope this is understandable. If a class is cancelled or changed by ID however, we do offer refunds/transfers to everyone who has booked.