Rachel Dean is a contemporary dance artist based in Leeds who performs, teaches and choreographs. She has a particular interest in improvisation and collaboration with other art forms and is part of improvisation collective Mathilde.
She recently created and performed Nativity, a solo contemporary Christmas show at Theatre in Mill. Last year she directed Entwined, a dance theatre piece performed by a dressmaker and a dancer (Supported by Arts Council England, Chisenhale Dance Space and Yorkshire Dance). In 2008 she created Love in Idleness, a site-specific dance theatre piece made and performed in the gardens of a stately home on Midsummer Night (Commission from Dance in Herts). She has performed for Institute for Crazy Dancing, Cheshire Dance, Ascendance Rep, Markus Hoft, Faceless Theatre and The Body Cartography Project as well as in her own work. She is passionate about sharing her love of dance and teaches regularly at Yorkshire Dance, Mind the Gap and Leeds Contact Improvisation.
Rachel graduated from The Northern School of Contemporary Dance in 2006. In 2007 and 2009 she was selected for the International Danceweb Scholarship at Impulstanz Festival. She has a BSc in Psychology.
Rachel is interested in: Connections, dancing with people, growing things. Facilitating, working out how to do this better, structures that make power visible. Conversations that come from something physical. Starting from the smallest things, experience, sensation, interaction and building from there. Falling, spinning, twisting, getting disorientated.
Efficiency, doing just the right amount. Controlling less, leaving more potential for the unknown. Recognising when she feels safe, confident and trusting in herself and others. Playing on the edge of this. Contexts, funding, power. Contact Improvisation as a whole different framework for meeting, communicating, being. Meetings of people and bodies where all have equal possibility to change and create.
