‘The many-voiced landscape.’ (Abrahm 1996 quoted in Fairleigh & Rose Riley 2024 p.1)
This idea has inspired Mirabelle to think of the body as a landscape made up of many materials, including bones, flesh, minerals, and tissue. Through her movement practice, she explores a physical dialogue with the body’s inner landscape, listening to its sensations, rhythms and responses.
Using improvisation scores, crossings, visualisation and guided tasks without words, she develops a somatic practice based on attention rather than verbal instruction. By abstracting the physical nature of British Sign Language (BSL) into movement, she explores how the body can communicate through gesture, presence and physical awareness.
Movement becomes a conversation with the body itself, allowing meaning to emerge through embodied experience rather than spoken language. Through this process, Mirabelle deepens her connection to the body’s materiality, discovering new ways of listening, responding and understanding through movement.
Mirabelle Haddon (she/her) is a Deaf dance artist, choreographer, performer, and educator based in South East London. A graduate of the Rambert School, she later trained with Verve at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance. Her interdisciplinary practice spans contemporary dance and performance art, creating devised works that explore movement, materials, soundscapes, and sensory experience through Deaf and disabled perspectives. Rooted in somatic enquiry, her work reimagines performance as an evolving landscape of embodied communication.
Mirabelle has presented work nationally and internationally, with recent performances including Dyke Just Do It by Sweatmother at Glasgow International and AfterGlow by Anna Seymour, commissioned by Wellcome Collection. She collaborates regularly with Touretteshero and Candoco Dance Company. Alongside her artistic practice, she facilitates Crip-informed dance workshops across all ages championing accessible, creative spaces.
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 9650, to speak to a member of the Independent Dance team.
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.