Stuart Waters

Dance Artist, Performer, Maker, Teacher

Stuart graduated from the BA (Hons) Contemporary Dance in 1998 and studied for an MA at London School of Contemporary Dance.

Stuart Waters is a queer neurodiverse dance theatre artist. He has been a successful performing artist and dance maker for 22 years, working at the cutting edge of the devising processes and style of Protein Dance, Motionhouse, Wired Aerial Theatre, Barebones and Panta Rei Dans Theatre, Oslo.

As an integral member of these creative teams, he has been instrumental in realising their choreographic visions, involved in making seminal works that developed dance theatre and learning how to craft great theatrical works.

One of Stuart’s key collaborations was with director Luca Silvestrini, contributing to the shows LOL and Border Tales. LOL toured worldwide, winning the National Dance Award for Best Independent Dance Company in 2011 and the British Council New Connections Award in 2012.

Border Tales toured nationally and finished at the Edinburgh Fringe where it received 5-star reviews.

Stuart’s other credits include collaborations with directors and choreographers Ben Duke, Liam Steel, Antonia Grove (Rambert/Probe), Helen Baggett (Candoco, Geko), Rui Horta, Lois Taylor (Attik Dance), Sharon Watson, Henri Ougike, David Massingham, Mike Ashcroft (RSC), Kate Flatt, Pippa Duke, Rhiannon Faith, Yorgos Karamalegos, Viv Gordon and Tom Roden.

Stuart has been part of the One Dance UK mentorship programme, mentored by Janet Smith, and in 2011 he was awarded the Lisa Ullmann Fund to travel to New York to train with Susan Klein.

Stuart began to explore the creation of his own work in 2014, and has been commissioned to create choreographic works for Centres for Advanced Training (CATs) and BA Performing Arts courses across the UK. He has taught and created new work across Tanzania, Ethiopia, Jordan, Palestine, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Morocco and Beirut.

In 2015 Stuart received support from Dancers’ Career Development to train as a Reiki Therapist, and in 2020 he received further support to train in Human Givens (a model of psychotherapy) and Transactional Analysis. In 2020 he was invited to present his artistic practice at the International Association for Dance Science and Medicine annual conference.

He secured Arts Council England and DanceEast funding to create and tour RockBottom in 2019, a solo autobiographical show which challenged the topic of mental health. The show was a great success, opening conversations with audiences, dance organisations and schools nationally and internationally.

In 2020 Stuart received support from The Place via their Choreodrome programme, a research residency for established artists to explore new artistic territory, with additional support from the Wellcome Trust.