Independent Dance

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Independent Dance

ID runs an international programme of classes, workshops, research labs, events and talks.

Independent Dance (ID) is the UK's leading artist development organisation for dance. Founded in 1984, it has been artist-led ever since, working responsively to support dance artists in all roles, of all physicalities, and at all stages of career. We work with an international community, with a particular focus on inclusive body-based research enriched by cross-disciplinary and diverse approaches

. Through our year-round programme, we offer paid work to on average 80 artists every year. Our public programme includes classes and workshops, research spaces, talks and exchanges, led by internationally-renowned artists and inviting artists and audiences to deepen enquiry and exchange ideas. ID receives funding from Arts Council England as a National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) as part of a consortium with Siobhan Davies Dance, whose building we are based in. In 2019-20, ID’s portion of this funding is £71,068, which covers most of our core operating costs; salaries of our four part-time staff, office rent and administrative overheads which we aim to keep to a minimum. In addition, we raise funds through trusts and foundations and through individual donations. Our artistic programme exists on an income-generating basis, with earnings from curating and delivering an extensive programme aiming to cover costs.

07/06/2026

On Friday 26 June, we have our next ID Conversation with Seke Chimutengwende + Tim Etchells 🎤⁠
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✨Meet Tim:⁠
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Tim Etchells is an artist and writer based in the UK, whose work shifts between visual art, fiction and performance. He has worked in a wide variety of contexts, notably as the leader of the world-renowned Sheffield-based performance group Forced Entertainment.

Tim’s work has been exhibited and presented in significant institutions all over the world, and projects have been commissioned by Centre Pompidou (Paris), Basel Ballet, Whitechapel Gallery, Festival D’Avignon, NT Gent, Ruhr Triennale, among others. His visual art works are in private and institutional collections around the world, including Tate, The Arts Council Collection and Sprengel art museum (Hannover). His large-scale neon projects have been shown in cities and landscapes in numerous places including Frieze Sculpture (London), Circo Massimo (Rome), Zurich Theatre Spektakel and Kunsthalle Wien as well as permanent pieces in Sheffield (Site Gallery), Athens (Onasiss Cultural Centre) and Berlin (Theatre Hebbel-Am-Ufer).

He has collaborated with Marino Formenti, Aisha Orazbayeva, Tony Buck (The Necks), Tarek Atoui, Ant Hampton, Vlatka Horvat, Hugo Glendinning, Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods, and Elmgreen & Dragset. His collection of short fiction Endland was published by And Other Stories in 2019 and in the same year he won the Manchester Fiction Prize. His book on Forced Entertainment, Certain Fragments, is widely celebrated for its insight into collective performance making.

Monographs on Etchells’ work with Forced Entertainment and on his body of work in installation and neon were published in 2023 by Spector Books in Germany. He is represented by Ebensperger (Berlin) and by The Odds Agency (Paris). He is a patron of the Live Art Development Agency.

📅 Friday 26 June, 6.30-7.30pm⁠
📍 at Siobhan Davies Studios, SE1⁠
🎟️ £9 / £10 / £7⁠
🔗 Find out more and book this ID Conversation via⁠ https://independentdance.co.uk/event/id-conversations-with-seke-chimutengwende-tim-etchells/
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ID Conversations are a series of live performative dialogues between two artists, which began in autumn 2025. The Conversation series was devised as an ongoing research project exploring performative conversations, and each Conversation is an opportunity to gain a different insight into an artist’s practice. ⁠
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Photo Credit: Hugo Glendinning

[Image Description: A landscape image of Tim standing in a dark room wearing a colourful knitted jumper. His arms are folded across his torso, and his gaze is off to the left of the camera.]

06/06/2026

Join us in welcoming Becky Namgauds to the ID class programme to lead Morning Class, week commencing 22-26June💠
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Rebecca (Becky) Namgauds (she/her) is a choreographer, movement director, performer and multidisciplinary artist whose work is defined by a strikingly physical and emotionally charged approach to performance. Based in London, originally from the North of England, she has spent more than 15 years creating her own independent works and developing a movement language that is unmistakably her own; raw, instinctive and visceral. Her work for stage and screen has been described as “extraordinary, haunting and arrestingly physical” (Theatre Audience Podcast) and recognised by The Guardian as an unapologetic exploration of female instinct – identifying her as “one to watch.” Her most recent work THE HEAT sold out at Sadlers Wells in 2025 and will be touring nationally in 2026/27.

Selected teaching credits include: Lo Poroso in Colombia, Rambert Dance Company, Ballet National Da Marseille x LA HORDE France, National Dance Company Wales, Roma City Ballet Company Italy, The Place, Rambert School, LABAN, Middlesex University, Salford University, Threescore Dance for overs 55s. Over 60’s The Place.

🔗 To come along to her class, head to ⁠https://independentdance.co.uk/event/morning-class-becky-namgauds/
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Photo credit: Camilla Greenwell

[Image Description: A black and white portrait of Becky, a white woman in her 30s with long brown hair, gesticulating and facilitating.]

05/06/2026

This month, we have Seke Chimutengwende + Tim Etchells for our next ID Conversation 🎤⁠
⁠
✨Meet Seke:⁠
⁠
Seke Chimutengwende is a choreographer and performer based in London and working internationally for over 20 years.

Seke uses choreography to experiment with alternative approaches to authorship and governance; crafting processes and forms that dislodge hierarchies and release new modes of collectivity. His recent work 'It begins in darkness' (2022), looks at ghosts and haunted houses as metaphors for how histories of slavery and colonialism haunt the present. Seke has also recently choreographed a work for Candoco Dance Company, 'In Worlds Unknown' (2022). Seke’s new work, 'The Last Quartet', which imagines a “last work” or “last attempt” at choreography, inspired by TS Eliot’s Four Quartets, will premiere in autumn 2026. Seke is concurrently researching a new choreography for six dancers set to Miles Davis’ groundbreaking 1972 album On The Corner. It will premiere in autumn 2027.

Alongside his choreographic work, Seke is currently touring Long Solos: long solo improvisation performances of 50 to 60 minutes and works as performer with Forced Entertainment having previously performed with companies such as DV8 Physical Theatre and Lost Dog.

Seke has taught in a variety of contexts, including London Contemporary Dance School, Trinity Laban, The Rambert School, Northern School of Contemporary Dance, P.A.R.T.S. and Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

📅 Friday 26 June, 6.30-7.30pm⁠
📍 at Siobhan Davies Studios, SE1⁠
🎟️ £9 / £10 / £7⁠
🔗 Find out more and book this ID Conversation via⁠ https://independentdance.co.uk/event/id-conversations-with-seke-chimutengwende-tim-etchells/
⁠
ID Conversations are a series of live performative dialogues between two artists, which began in autumn 2025. The Conversation series was devised as an ongoing research project exploring performative conversations, and each Conversation is an opportunity to gain a different insight into an artist’s practice. ⁠
⁠
Photo Credit: Denis Stošić

[Image Description: A landscape image of Seke, performing Long Solo 5, wearing a light blue long-sleeve shirt and dark coloured trousers. His arms are spread wide and gaze it to the upper left corner of the image.]

04/06/2026

📣 With Stopgap Dance Company leading Morning Class next week, we wanted to highlight the opportunity to connect with company members and find out more about the company’s artistic practice and equitable culture!⁠
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Meet Stopgap Dance Company⁠
📅 8-12 June, 12pm-1pm
📍Siobhan Davies Studio SE1⁠
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Stopgap Dance Company is driven by a diverse creative team using dance as a powerful movement for change. Their mission is to create an inclusive world where diversity is not only accepted but actively pursued, and where Deaf, Disabled, and neurodivergent people are no longer limited by prejudice. ⁠
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Working with an artform shaped by human touch and energised by connection, their work demonstrates the transformative power of inclusivity. By moving together, they create remarkable experiences that challenge perceptions of difference and dismantle inequities of privilege, in dance and across all aspects of living, collaborating, and creating as humans. ⁠
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🔗 To come along to class, book via https://independentdance.co.uk/event/morning-class-stopgap/2026-06-08/

Photo Credit: Chris Parkes

[Image Description: Senior Dance Artist & Choreographer Nadenh Poan, a British Cambodian wheelchair dancer with light brown skin, dancing in a studio, in a moment of softness, with eyes downcast and one arm reaching up towards the opposite shoulder. Other dancers move in the space around him. Text overlayed read: meet Stopgap Dance Company in the top right corner. Than in the bottom left it says: After Morning Class with Stopgap next week, 8 -12 June, there will be an opportunity to meet the company members and find out more about their artistic practice and equitable culture!]

03/06/2026

We had a lovely first chat with Graduates this afternoon, as part of Tuning In, and we wanted to highlight this offer as we go again tomorrow!🎓⁠

We are offering 10 free Morning Class spaces for recent Graduates for tomorrow's class with Matthias Sperling. Places are free, available on a first-come, first-served basis and for anyone who has graduated from a BA or MA programme within the last 3 years.

💬 Then after class, you are invited to join us in the parlour where we can chat over a cup of tea, learn more about you and your practice and share more about Independent Dance and the work we do.

📅 Thursday 4 June. 12pm-1pm
📍 at Siobhan Davies Studios, SE1⁠
🔗 Graduates, book class + come along for a chat with us via https://independentdance.co.uk/event/morning-class-matthias-sperling-2/

02/06/2026

Flora Baltz welcomes you to Monday Night Improvisation next week, inviting you into a relational movement practice informed by somatic approaches, particularly the methodology of Angel Vianna, where attention, listening, internal sensation and playfulness become starting points for movement ⚡️
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📅 8 June, 10am- 12pm⁠
📍 at Siobhan Davies StudiosSE1⁠
🎟️ £10 / £8 with a class card⁠
🔗 Book via the Monday Night Improvisation link in our bio⁠
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⁠Flora's class draws from her research on ‘archipelagic thinking’, in this session, she will offer dynamics to explore how bodies exist in relation to space, to others, and to shifting internal landscapes, while also shaping the environments around them.

Photo credit: Flora Baltz in CHARCO, by Pepa Ubera. Photo by Henry Kesielewski
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[Image Description: Flora, a woman with light brown skin tone and blonde mid-length hair, is sitting in fourth position and dancing. They are lit by a large spotlight, and in the background is a duo of dancers moving in another spotlight. Flora is wearing a fluorescent green and grey net costume.]

01/06/2026

Engage with playful guided improvisation and learn movement phrases together with Christian Brinklow and Nadenh Poan, Stopgap’s Senior Artists for Leading Morning Class next week ✨

📅 8- 12 June, 10am-12pm⁠
🎟️ £10 ⁠or £8 with a class card⁠
📍⁠ Siobhan Davies Studio, SE1
🔗 Book via ⁠https://independentdance.co.uk/event/morning-class-stopgap/

Christian Brinklow and Nadenh Poan will offer structured exercises with multiple access points, supporting a range of physicalities and learning styles, sharing the company’s playful guided improvisations — inviting dancers to explore new movement textures, dynamics, and expressive possibilities. Each class will culminate in the learning of a movement phrase, taught in a way that encourages clarity and choice, allowing us to move together in unison while finding joy in individual interpretation.

Photo Credit: Chris Parkes

[Image Description: Stopgap Senior Dance Artists Nadenh Poan and Christian Brinklow in a studio with a shiny wooden floor and white walls. They’re in a moment of connected movement, with Nadenh balancing on one wheel of his wheelchair, leaning towards Christian, who is stepping forward and holding Nadenh’s outstretched arm in both hands. Other dancers watch, blurred in the foreground.]

31/05/2026

Join us in welcoming Daniel Hay-Gordon to the ID class programme to lead Morning Class in a few weeks time 🌿
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Daniel Hay-Gordon (he/him) is a dancer, choreographer and filmmaker and one half of dance theatre company Thick & Tight, which he established with co-director and fellow Rambert graduate El Perry back in 2012.

As Thick & Tight (T&T), Hay-Gordon and Perry take influence from the historical, the political and the artistic to create a mix of dance, mime, theatre and drag performances. They are committed to engaging with people from a range of backgrounds, with particular focus on the LGBTQI+ and learning-disabled communities. Having started out in small-scale and q***r spaces, Thick & Tight have gone on to work at Barbican, Lowry, Sadler’s Wells, Southbank, BAC, ROH, among others.

Outside of T&T, Dan works with other companies as a choreographer and movement director, including, among others The Globe, Royal Ballet, Hollywood Bowl and Staatsoper Berlin.

Dan is particularly interested in dance’s relationship to music and poetry, and dance as a performance art.
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🔗 To come along to his class week commencing 15 June, head to the Morning Class link in our bio to book! ⁠
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Photo credit: Jon Archdeacon

[Image Description: A black and white portrait of Daniel, a man with tanned skin and dark curly hair.]

29/05/2026

We are thrilled to share that booking is now open for our upcoming online lab series Reimagining Form: Entering Masunaga’s Reclining Meridian Stretches Anew with Eva Karczag 📣

📅 Fridays, 17 July – 11 September, 8am-9.30am
🎟️ £12 per session
📍Online, via Zoom
🔗 Book via our website, link in bio

The sessions offer an opportunity to engage with Masunaga’s Reclining Meridian Stretches anew–slowing down to slower than slow, reaching into the synergistic and omni-directional movement that lies at the heart of Masunaga's proposals, to activate and follow the breath, connective tissue, meridians, organs, and fluids. The Reclining Meridian Stretches will be explored by Eva through the lens of body-mind awareness approaches that are part of her practice, including Anatomical Release Technique, Ideokinesis, Alexander Technique, Kinetic Awareness and Taiji/Qigong.

Over 9 weekly sessions you will explore each stretch, both individually, and eventually, connected into one sequence. Ample breathing room will be given for each participant to inhabit their own safe space and easefulness. At the end of each session, we will all move, write/draw or rest, with our newly experienced insights.

📸 Eva Karczag, photo Lois Greenfield.

28/05/2026

Today we're excited share Tuning Practice with SERAFINE1369, monthly sessions that honour dancing as a wild and sacred relational devotional practice of moving energy. Be guided towards accessing your most liberated dancing beyond form 📣

📅 Sunday 5 July & Sunday 2 August, 4-6pm, with more dates to be announced
📍 Siobhan Davies Studios, SE1 6ER
🎟️ £12 / 2 bursary places available for QTIPOC
🔗 More information and booking via our website, link in bio.

SERAFINE1369 will offer simple invitations to dance, allowing space for the complexities of experience and relation to emerge as material. Rather than steering or directing us towards an elsewhere, or somewhere specific and inviting a curiosity about what is already t/here.

We will work with/through/between the energetics of the room, the day, the season, the group and each persons’ archive of experience. Practices will involve attuning our capacities for sensing and being open to the information that can surface or arrive moment to moment; cultivating states of readiness.

Dropping in to the realm(s) of embodied presence and reclaiming imagination as a flexible and elaborative technology and not a seat of anxiety, anticipation and fear. You'll practice navigating the unknown whilst anchoring in the pleasure, familiarity and connection that can be accessed through your own dancing bodies. Working to visibilise the often invisible systems that choreograph us, and to grow awareness around our own tendencies and desires so that instinct is something that we can work with, rather than be controlled by.

🔗 To find out more about these sessions and the bursary places available, head to the link in our bio.

📸 SERAFINE1369, photo Ronan Powell.
[Image Description: Someone lays face down in a climbing position on a dance studio floor. The photograph is slightly blurry and warm toned.]

Address

Independent Dance, Siobhan Davies Studios, 85 St George's Road
London
SE16ER

Website

http://www.independentdance.co.uk/

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