ResDance

ResDance Series 10: Episode 5: Dancing Across Borders with Anna Des Clayes
In this episode, Anna shares insights as a community dance facilitator and choreographer whose work celebrates movement, culture, and connection. Drawingon the lived experiences of participants, she leads workshops that inspire curiosity, joy, and co-creation. We explore her approach to intergenerational exchange, storytelling, and the ways movement fosters social connection. Annareflects on the creative process, ethics of care, and the power of giving participants freedom and space. Throughout, she highlights ideas of community and communitas, celebrating the transformative possibilities of moving, sharing, and connecting together.
Biography
Anna Des Clayes is a community dance facilitator and choreographer whose work explores participation,intergenerational exchange, and social connection through movement. She is particularly interested in co-creating dance with refugee and migrant communities, using creative practice as a tool for storytelling, care, and collectivebelonging. Originally training professionally at London Studio Centre, Anna’s early dance career was interrupted by injury, leading her to pursue her parallel academic interest in science. She worked as a science teacher in London and Madrid before returning to dance to complete an MA in Choreographyat the University of Chichester, graduating with a first-class degree. Anna’s recent projects include Trails of Migration (2022), commissioned by Sussex Dance Network and co-devised with refugee and migrantwomen; Communi-ties from the Past (2023), developed through South East Dance’s Brighton Fringe Bursary and featuring performers aged 11 to 86; and Portals (2025), an immersive work for Brighton Fringe. Her piece PlayTime has been presented at multiple venues, including the Southbank Centre. Alongside her choreographic practice, Annaleads regular intergenerational dance and movement sessions in Crawley, teaches yoga to children, young people, and adults, and curates community dance eventsacross Brighton and Sussex.
Headshot Photo Credit: Matilda Van Orden
Contact details/Social media channels
Email: [email protected]
Instagram: @communitasdance
Other links of interest
Organisations that support refugees and migrants in Brighton: 
@voicesinexile 
@refugeeradio
Refugee Week – 16 – 22 June 2025 (lots ofresources of how to take part on the event)
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ResDance Series 10: Episode 4: Dance at the Centre: Rethinking Dance for Health with Emily Davis 
In this episode, Emily shares her journey to working at the intersection of dance, health, and social science. She reflects on her recently completed PhD, undertaken jointly across the University of St Andrews, the Royal Conservatoireof Scotland, and Glasgow Caledonian University in partnership with Scottish Ballet. Her research focuses on dancing with multiple sclerosis and explores dance as both a tool for health promotion and a method of inquiry.
Throughout the episode, we discuss how dance functions within health contexts, the importance of moving beyond disease-centred approaches, and innovative researchmethods such as movement-based interviews that centre the dancing body. Emily also shares insights into her current projects and the value of interdisciplinary collaboration in expanding how dance can contribute to healthand wellbeing.
Biography
Emily Davis is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Moving Bodies Lab at Durham University. Her research is focused on the intersection of dance, health, and social science, exploring the potential of dance as both a means of health promotion and a method of inquiry. Emily recently completed her PhD jointly across the University of St Andrews, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and Glasgow Caledonian University, in partnership with Scottish Ballet, centred on dancing with multiple sclerosis. Alongside her research, Emily previously danced professionally with the Philadelphia Ballet and led dance health programmes across Philadelphia.
Website and Social media channels
https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/emily-m-davis/
www.linkedin.com/in/emily-davis-dancehealth

https://medhumsplatform.org/labs/moving-bodies/
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ResDance Series 10: Episode 3: You Can’t Balance AwayOppression: Dance, Power, Resistance with RoyonaMitra
In this episode, Royona reflects on her relationship to dance, from her training in classicised and contemporary Indian dance in India to specialising in physical theatre in the UK. Drawing on her experiences as a teacher,researcher, and practitioner, she explores how movement practice has become a space to question and reflect on questions of power within dance. Royona discusses how moments of discomfort throughout her training and practice have shaped her intellectual inquiry, often becoming starting points for deeper questioning. She also reflects on how these experiences, alongside her academic writing, have helped unpack questions around caste politics, caste identity, and caste supremacy, and their intersections with gender, race and other socialpositions, including how practices such as contact improvisation shift when considered within the realities of caste and power.
Themes of power, responsibility, and positionality emerge as she considers how dance and performance studies can both challenge and reproduce structuresof power. Looking ahead, Royona reflects on the need to move from reflection into action—galvanising practitioners to question and reshape the field. A thoughtful and thought-provoking conversation on dance, power, and resistance.
Biography
 Royona Mitra is Professor of Dance andPerformance Cultures at Brunel University of London, UK. She is the author of Unmaking Contact: Choreographing South Asian Touch (2025, OUP) and Akram Khan: Dancing New Interculturalism (2015, Palgrave). Her first monograph was awarded the 2017 de la Torre Bueno FirstBook Award by the Dance Studies Association (DSA); her article "Unmaking Contact: Choreographic Touch at the Intersections of Race, Caste and Gender", was awarded DSA’s Gertrude Lippincott Award in 2022 for theBest English Language Journal Article; and her co-edited journal special issue titled "Outing Archives/Archives Outing" for Contemporary Theatre Review journal,alongside Profs Bryce Lease and Melissa Blanco Borelli, was awarded the Theatre and Performance Research Association's Edited Collection Prize in 2022. Herresearch examines systems of oppression in dance and performance cultures at the intersections of bodies, social power regimes, and choreography as powerand resistance. She contributes to the fields of diaspora and performance, South Asian dance and performance cultures, critical dance studies and performance studies. Royona was Co-Investigator on the AHRC funded #DanceResearchMatters “South Asian Dance Equity” project (2023-2025) alongside Drs Prarthana Purkayastha (PI, RHUL) and Anusha Kedhar (Co-I, UC Riverside). She was also Co-Investigator on the BritishAcademy Small Grant funded “Contemporary Dance and Whiteness” project (2019) alongside Drs Simon Ellis (Coventry) and Arabella Stanger (Sussex). She was co-Chair of TaPRA alongside Drs Broderick Chow (RCSSD) (2022-2025) and Rachel Hann (2022-2024).
Contact details
Website https://royonamitra.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/royona-mitra-ab359333b/
Other related links
Unmaking Contact: Choreographing South Asian Touch (2025)
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/unmaking-contact-9780197627778?cc=gb&lang=en&#
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ResDance Series 10: Episode 2: Dancer Hormone Health: Why It Matters with Nicky Keay
In this episode, Nicky reflects on her experiences in sport and dance, and her passion for both hormone health and dancing. Framed primarily within a dance context, she shares how she applies her knowledge to support dancers in optimising both their health and performance. We explore the powerful role hormones play in maintaining stability, supporting overall wellbeing, and enhancing dance performance. Nicky offers insight into the challenges of artistic pursuits that strive for a particular aesthetic, and the delicate balancebetween these demands and the body’s natural capabilities and limitations.
Nicky advocates for a personalised approach — listening carefully, considering the whole person, and recognising the risks of neglecting hormone health to ensure each dancer is supported in what is optimal for them.  Packed with valuable insights, this conversation calls for a greater awareness of the power of hormones and encourages students and performers to become more body-aware and informed abouttheir hormonal health. She stresses the importance of early education, open communication, collaboration among support teams, and creating environments where listening and honest conversation are prioritised. The key takeaway:recognise the power of your hormones, appreciate them, and learn how to work with them to become a stronger, healthier, and more empowered dancer.
Biography
Nicky is a medical doctor specialising in dancer hormone health. Nicky is medical advisor to Scottish Ballet and a keen ballet dancer. Nicky’s clinical endocrine work provides personalised approach for hormone health, offering health advisory appointments, with a focus for those experiencing relative energy deficiency in sport (REDs) and women experiencing perimenopause and menopause. Based on her research into REDs, Nicky developed the free online personal availability questionnaire (PEAQ) https://mypeaq.streamlit.app/
Nicky offers talks on a variety of hormone topics at international conferences for organisations and groups. Nicky is the author of “Hormones, Health and Human Potential” and editor of “Myths of Menopause”. Her research into the impacts of lifestyle, nutrition and exercise on hormone networks has been published in peer-reviewed journals. Nicky holds the position of Honorary Clinical Lecturer in the Division of Medicine, University College London. Nicky studied medicine at Cambridge University. After gaining Membership of the Royal College of Physicians, London UK, Nicky worked as a Research Fellow at St Thomas’ Hospital, London, where she was part of the international medical team that developed an anti-doping test for growth hormone. Nicky is a member of the British Menopause Society (BMS) and has completed the BMS Principles and Practice of Menopause Care training programme and Management of Menopause Certification
Website
www.nickykeayfitness.com
Social media channels
@drnickykeay
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ResDance Series 10: Episode 1: From HEAD to TOE: The creative moving body in primary education with Sarah Hall
In this episode, Sarah shares insights from her work as an artist-researcher and facilitator in community and educational settings. Centered on her expertise in creative practice through embodied knowledge, our conversation explores the aims of From HEAD to TOE, a project funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Teacher Development Fund. We discuss how Sarah’s work emphasises empowerment, inclusion, and finding voice, highlighting approaches used within the project, methods of engagement and ways of movingtogether to enjoy learning, embody knowledge, and support individual wellbeing. Sarah reflects on her experiences so far, emphasising the importance of placing care at the heart of practice and the value of a co-creative approach in drivingmeaningful change.
Biography
Sarah is an experienced facilitator working in community and education settings, specialising in creative practice through embodied and improvisational methodologies. Sarah is a Senior Lecturer and Practitioner Researcher at the University of Lancashire and also leads BlueMoose Dance, a community dance organisation based in the North of England, with a specialist focus on practice with, for and by young people and Artist and Teacher CPD. Through a person-centred approach, Sarah’s work surrounds notions of empowerment, inclusion and finding voice, working co-creatively with participants through play and improvisational approaches, with care and quality at the heart of the practice. 
From HEAD to TOE project biography
We use the creative moving body and embodied pedagogies to support teachers in modelling and teaching metacognition and executive functioning skills. Working from care-filled practices, our CPD model and research inquiry supports Teachers and Pupils to connect to self, to better recognise their needs, to articulate their preferences and use creativity and movement to play, discover, connect and empower.
This phase, funded by Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Teacher Development Fund, builds on our initial focus of the creative moving body in the retention and recall of key English and Maths knowledge, which ran from 2021 - 2023, funded by Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Arts Based Learning Fund.
Website
[email protected]
Social media channels
@unilancashire
@danceuclan
@bluemoosedance

Please share this episode with students, educators, practitioners, performers, and interdisciplinary researchers curious to learn more about dance research in action.