Over the next few weeks our first-year BA (Hons) students will be working with Alethia Antonia, Antonio Bukhar, Gracefool Collective and Keira Martin, on new screendance works produced in collaboration with The Motion Dance Collective. The four works will premiere online as part of Flock Fest, a multi-disciplinary arts festival curated and produced by NSCD second-year students, Fri 26 - Sat 27 March.
Alethia Antonia is a freelance performer, choreographer, teacher and researcher working across the UK. She trained at London Contemporary Dance School (BA Hons), Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance (Exchange Programme), and Northern School of Contemporary Dance (Foundation and VERVE).
As a performer, she has toured internationally and worked with Russell Maliphant Dance Company, James Wilton Dance, James Cousins Company, VOXED – Wayne Parsons, Flexer and Sandiland, Seke Chimutengwende, Matsena Productions, Chhaya Collective, Heather Walrond Company and Extended Play (Jamaal Burkmar) among others.
Her work has been supported by The Place, Dance4, Yorkshire Dance, NSCD and Leeds Dance Partnership and has been performed at The Place, Yorkshire Dance, York Theatre Royal and Fashion Space Gallery.
She has taught nationally and internationally for institutions such as Scottish Dance Theatre, Phoenix Dance Theatre, The Place, LCDS, NSCD, Kingston University, Edge Hill University and Accademia Balletto Roma.
Antonio Bukhar Ssebuuma is the course leader for NSCD’s CertHE Cultural Dance Forms. He is an award-winning performer, choreographer, and teacher from Kampala, Uganda. His artistic practice blends diverse styles, namely Hip-hop, dancehall, breaking, contemporary, house and Ugandan traditional dances.
As a teacher Antonio has worked for Balleteatro, the University of Otago, Makerere University, Dance Aotearoa New Zealand, the University of Auckland, the University of Merseburg and the National Ballet Dance Trust.
Antonio is the co-founder of renowned dance company Tabu Flo Dance Company and has toured original works including Empty The Space and Twenty Fifteen across Europe and Africa.
Antonio was awarded the Pina Bausch Fellowship in 2017 as a visiting dance scholar at the University of Auckland. He also received the Caroline Plummer Fellowship at the University of Otago in 2019, while working on a project which aimed to break down barriers between community dance practice and academia. He is on a quest to bridge the gap between the streets and the classroom.
Feminist, forthright, and fiercely funny, Leeds-based Gracefool Collective make wildly entertaining performances about the absurdities of modern existence. They use humour, collaboration and collectivism as tools to create work that is “intelligent, creative, fully-realised, multi-layered, cleverly soundtracked and completely engrossing” (The Reviews Hub).
Their latest work This Is Not A Wedding, a surreal reimagining of traditional rites of passage, opened the prestigious Surf the Wave showcase at Pavilion Dance South West in 2019 and undertook an 18-date UK tour. The work was selected to be part of BBC & One Dance UK’s Dance Passion Day 2019.
Their previous work This Really Is Too Much has been performed nationally and internationally to critical acclaim, including a 4- and 5-star run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where it gained the Underbelly Untapped Award for Innovative New Writing. In 2018 This Really Is Too Much won the coveted Stockholm Fringe Grand Prix for Excellence in Performance Art.
Graduates of the BA programme at NSCD, their previous commissions include Choreodrome (The Place), REVEAL (Bolton Octagon), Furnace (Leeds Playhouse) and two Northern Connections commissions from Northern School of Contemporary Dance in 2015 and 2017. Gracefool were twice shortlisted for the Vantage Arts Prize and were the 2014/15 beneficiaries of CATAPULT (NSCD).
gracefoolcollective.comKeira is a dancer, choreographer and movement director, born and raised in Barnsley. Trained in Irish dance, her work focuses on traditional art forms and has been presented at some of the UK’s most prestigious venues including Royal Opera House and Sadler’s Wells, as well as in Bermuda, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Brazil, Ireland and the USA. She graduated from Northern School of Contemporary Dance in 1999.
Keira has collaborated with companies and artists including Yolande Snaith, Jonathan Burrows, Fidget Feet Aerial Dance Theatre, Kompany Malakhi and State of Emergency. Keira has also worked as rehearsal director for Mobius Dance Theatre and Autin Dance Theatre.
Dance Art Journal described her commission Here She Comes for Sadler’s Wells’ Wild Card series as a “refreshingly raw and authentic autobiographical work”. Keira developed Good Blood as part of the Surf the Wave programme and presented it in 2020 in partnership with Slung Low and Leeds Dance Partnership.
She has over 20 years’ experience of facilitating community projects and participatory workshops within the UK and internationally. Keira has undertaken such projects in private dance schools, colleges, community groups, pupil referral units and local authorities. She also teaches on CAT schemes across the country.
keiradance.comThe Motion Dance Collective will be working with our guest choreographers to produce four short dance films for Flock Fest.
The Motion Dance Collective (The MDC) was founded in 2011 by director and choreographer Omari Carter. Since its beginnings, The MDC has gained worldwide recognition for producing thought-provoking, innovative screendance work that tells a story through dance and moving image.
The MDC’s projects have been screened across the UK and internationally at both dance-film and mainstream film festivals including Loikka Dance Film Festival (Helsinki, Finland), Cinedans Dance On Screen Festival (Amsterdam, Netherlands) British Urban Film Festival (London, UK), Lightmoves Festival of Screendance (Limerick, Ireland) and the San Francisco Dance Film Festival (USA).
In 2016, The MDC’s short film End of the Block won the UK Screendance Award at Perth Screendance Festival and in 2017, short body percussion film Ease on Down became a finalist in the Best Soundtrack category of the My Røde Reel Short Film Competition.
motiondancecollective.com
