This January join Chevon Edwards for this guided movement space, designed as a gentle incubator for movement-based research for Black, Brown, People of Colour and those of the Global Majority.
In this session, we will explore the sensations of morphing and melting, guided by the idea of transformation. We’ll begin with a check-in with ourselves, leading into contact and connection with others and the space. Together, we will investigate how bodies shift, merge, and evolve. We’ll move through tasks that invite moulding, sinking, holding, and folding — finding the curves and bends that allow one form to transform into another. In this process, movement becomes listening, and touch becomes dialogue.
Chevon offers: “Soft activism begins when we grant ourselves permission to take up space and explore without resistance. The body, through contact, becomes both archive and possibility — always reshaping, always journeying.”
Touch as Language
Touch as Language invites Black, Brown, POC and Global Majority artists, movers and curious bodies to gather in a supportive environment to explore movement and communication through touch as a somatic and relational practice. Each workshop session is led by either Rhys or Chevon, and each iteration of Touch as Language is unique. This space welcomes all levels of movement experience. Rhys and Chevon think of this workshop offering as something that is alternative to a contact improvisation space, a space of community, connection and movement. You will be guided through the session and investigate how touch can act as language and reveal layers of memory, emotion and connection. Through partner work and reflective dialogue, each session places emphasis on consent, cultural context, freedom and joy.
During the workshop, you will have space to move with others that share similar lived experiences and to build knowledges together. We recognise that bodies and spaces are political, and in these moments, we are making an active choice not to decolonize the existing form of contact improvisation but rather to build a new movement space with and for artists of colour.
Touch as Language is not focused on a skills-based practice and you don’t need to have come to any of the other sessions. In each session we invite you to be as active and visible as you want and to find the power and beauty of community, together, in a space that is nourishing and joyful.
This conversation came about in response to a lack of opportunity for artists of the Global Majority to dance with each other and exist authentically, particularly within Contact Improvisation spaces. Therefore, Touch as Language is exclusively for people that identify as Black, Brown or a Person of Colour or Global Majority and those who are racialised. This includes people who are Black, Asian, Brown, mixed-heritage, those indigenous to the global south and those who experience racism.
Chevon Edwards (she/her) is a dance artist, researcher, and creative whose practice delves into movement, social inquiry, and embodied storytelling. A graduate of the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, she has performed with companies including Tavaziva Dance Company and Earth-bound Dance Theatre, as well as with artists Bryony Ella and Dr. Tia-Monique Uzor.
She developed her practice through the Master’s programme at Rambert School, where she was awarded a distinction for her research into deepening somatic experience and experiential performance—work that continues to shape her artistic voice. Chevon’s practice explores the complexities of human behaviour, social dynamics, and audience engagement, striving to blur the lines between performance and lived experience.
Coined by Rosemary Campbell-Stephens, “Global Majority is a collective term that first and foremost speaks to and encourages those so-called to think of themselves as belonging to the global majority. It refers to people who are Black, Asian, Brown, mixed-heritage, indigenous to the global south, and or have been racialised as ‘ethnic minorities’.”
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 phone the main reception at Siobhan Davies Studios. Alternatively, you may ask to be connected to ID directly, where you can speak with a member of the Independent Dance team, or leave a voice message.