Rosie Kay

Rosie Kay is an award-winning choreographer and Artistic Director of Rosie Kay Dance Company. RKDC creates brave new dance in Birmingham that tours to audiences at home and abroad. Rosie has a reputation for making bold, original and exciting works that challenge perceptions and take on innovative subjects with deep, invested research. Recent projects include Absolute Solo II which saw Rosie return to performing and exploring her own autobiographical history, Rosie Kay’s Fantasia, 5 SOLDIERS and 10 SOLDIERS presented in association with the British Army, MK ULTRA and MODERN WARRIOR. Rosie Kay Dance Company are a National Portfolio Organisation, supported by Arts Council England, and are Associate Company to Birmingham Hippodrome theatre. Rosie was the first choreographer to be Leverhulme Artist in Residence to the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford and has published academic work on her time there, 5 Soldiers and in dance neuroscience research. Rosie Kay Dance Company was awarded Best Independent Dance Company by the National Dance Awards, and the company have won a Public Health England Award for their work with military communities. Rosie is currently touring the UK with her solo show and is in the process of creating a large-scale, Birmingham-based Romeo+ Juliet which will premiere in September.

ETHER Seminar Two Digital Provocation Abstract: Between the theoretical and the practical- understanding yourself and your body
Workshop led by dancer, choreographer and director, Rosie Kay

Rosie Kay will bring 23 years of performing, choreographing and teaching experience to lead a workshop that will include some theoretic frameworks and principles for designing your own participatory research work, as well as leading a practical session, understanding yourself from within.

Kay’s highly researched works have span across many highly relevant and controversial subjects.

Through her company, works such as 5 Soldiers, MK Ultra and Romeo+ Juliet have involved field research, interviews, and workshops to test ideas and concepts as well as long creative processes as the performers embody such diverse characters as squaddies, brainwashed pop stars and Shakespearian archetypes. For 5 Soldiers Rosie joined an all-male infantry battalion in pre-deployment training and spent time with injured soldiers at Headely Court and the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, Selly Oak. Working with teenagers, Kay began to hear explanations and stories of pop stars and the dark satanic workings of the pop industry through the ‘Illuminati,’ and delved deeply online into the rabbit’s hole of conspiracy theory as well as working with and interviewing children, teenagers and young people to create MK Ultra. For Rosie’s new work a contemporary setting of Rome+ Juliet, Rosie has been working with school children for over a year, spent time with neighbourhood police on the streets, and worked with community leaders, youth workers, and other artists. Rosie has also co-designed and delivered participatory projects, in health settings (University of Oxford), theatre settings (Woyzeck community cast of 100 participants at The REP) and for TV (Commonwealth Games Live Handover). Rosie will discuss her working methodologies for how to enter communities and how to build trust and uncover that which is kept secret in plain sight.

Rosie will then lead an hour-long session, exploring some of her personal physical methods for learning to listen to the body. Rosie believes that you must be in touch with yourself and your emotional/mental and physical states in order to be open to meeting and listening to others. Due to Covid, this will be an unusual way to engage in body-to-body understanding, so Rosie asks that participants join with an open mind and experimental approach. She will make sure this is appropriate for all ages and abilities but you will need to take responsibility for your own safety.

Following the practical session, there will be a chance for a Q+A with Rosie about her work and working methods.