Monday, Tuesday and Friday: Kathy Crick
The classes aim to support and enliven the felt sense of movement experience in order to reveal and resource energy and creativity. They are variously framed through physical tasks, engagement with anatomical and other imagery and exploration of qualities of touch, towards cultivating states and structures for moving together. Content encourages responsiveness to gravity – such as in falling, momentum, inertia and suspension; appreciation of spherical space; a dynamic sensibility to ourselves and a permeable and vital relationship between our inner and outer environments. There will be an invitation to sometimes work in contact with others.
Wednesday and Thursday: emilyn claid
The classes will begin with a somatic movement practice of letting go, drawing on fundamental developmental movements of yield, push, reach, grasp, pull and release in relation to gravity and ground. Working with this practice as self and environmental support, participants engage in improvisational scores, working with each other to develop presence and creativity through relational impact and meetings with difference.
This week of morning class forms part of the MA/MFA Creative Practice: Dance Professional programme, meaning that there are a reduced number of public places available. If this class is sold out, please join the waiting list to be notified if a place becomes available.
Kathy Crick (she/her) has been developing and sharing her practice since 1986. She currently teaches Improvisation, Contact Improvisation, Choreography, Performance and supports research projects at Trinity Laban, London. Examples of previous work includes performing for Jai – Yu Chang Corti, Motionhouse, Florence Peake and Yolande Snaith. Performance making with composer Sarah Goldfarb, Mind the Gap and Heart n Soul. Live Art with Doran George and Michael Mayhew. Improvised performance with SoFT. Her practice is informed by studies in psychology, shiatsu and somatic education. She is interested in facilitating solo and ensemble material in spontaneous composition.
emilyn claid (she/her) has a career that back to the 1960s when she was a ballet dancer with the National Ballet of Canada and the 1970s when she was co-founder of experimental collective X6 Dance Space in London, a pioneering organisation for New Dance. In the 1980s she was artistic director of Extemporary Dance Theatre and in the 1990s choreographed for companies such as Phoenix and Candoco. Working as an independent dance artist emilyn made and performed a series of iconic solo works as a lesbian-queer artist. emilyn is also an emeritus professor and a Gestalt psychotherapist and has recently published FALLING Through Dance and Life, (Bloomsbury 2021), a book that re- thinks Western culture’s physical, metaphorical, and psychological relationship to gravity. Working between live art and dance theatre, emilyn has recently toured a solo show Untitled (2022-24) and choreographed The Trembling Forest (2025) in collaboration with Martin O’Brien.
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.