Teaching • training• coaching

Higher Education teaching

I have 20 years of teaching experience as a lecturer and freelance teacher. My career in education started by offering cross-curricular drama and movement skills to primary school children in Athens and London (Artis, Caboodle). Since 2009, I have been working regularly across different HE institutions (Goldsmiths, Rose Bruford College, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance) as a module leader, lecturer and mentor and have also taught as a VL in other Universities and Conservatoires (Middlesex, LAMDA, Drama Studio). In 2022, I became a Fellow of Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

In designing and planning, I follow a ‘learning-centred approach’ that caters for students’ individual needs and levels of experience. In class, I seek to create focused and inclusive environments where students can discover the richness of their expressive range and overall potential with confidence, pleasure and ease. My classes have a laboratory atmosphere where I propose material and invite adjustments, variations and provocations so that everyone can feel that they are learning together. Trying things out, making mistakes, solving challenges. As a mentor, I am an attentive listener and support students to find out what they are deeply passionate about and fulfil it though methodical steps and by asking the right questions.

I've had the honour to study and train with some wonderful teachers and pioneers in their field. Among those who have influenced my practice are Song of the Goat Theatre (Poland), Farm in the Cave (Czech Republic), Studio Matejka (Poland), Meg Stuart (UK), Nancy Stark Smith (UK/Spain), Charlie Morrissey (UK/Malta), Kirstie Simson (UK), Simonetta Alessandri (UK), Miranda Tufnell (UK) and Naomi Annand (UK).

My movement teaching fuses elements from Eastern European Laboratory theatre and dance-theatre; yoga; somatic movement; postmodern dance; Laban/Bartenieff; Contact Improvisation; and experimental theatre and writing. I have a deep interest in the senses, especially touch as a tool for training, fostering ensemble connection and composing. Cultivating somatic awareness enables students to become curious about how their body works and how it can transform in order to access more heightened levels of expression. Combining experiential anatomy, poetic visualisation, contact, rhythm and impulse-based work, my classes focus on breath-infused receptiveness, playful risk-taking and fine tuning with the self, the partner, and the environment.

~ Finding softness within strength

~ Practising availability

~ Fine tuning awareness

~ Embracing contradiction

~ Cultivating care and curiosity about the inner world of our body and the environment we live in.

Interdisciplinary and multimodal performance, research and writing are additional areas of expertise in which I have specialised over the past five years.

At TL, in particular, I have a designed a module for the MA/MFA Creative Practice and an intensive for the MA Choreography that invites language to be experienced as an embodied and choreographic process. By translating textures, temperatures, and states of the sensing/moving body into language, the students learn how to navigate and experiment with different registers of language in their artistic practice more confidently and boldly.

Testimonials

'Thank you for holding a safe and explorative space for my mind, body and soul over the past 3 years...your classes have a been a breath of fresh air... Thank you for supporting, inspiring and pushing me - I am forever grateful' Jasmin

'Thank you so much for this year! You have given us an incredible space to learn in and we are so grateful for everything you have brought to us' Anja

TEACHING AREAS OF EXPERTISE & RESEARCH INTERESTS

Movement (somatic movement, Contact Improvisation, experiential anatomy, Laban/Bartenieff fundamentals, yoga, release-based dance, expressive movement, improvisation).
Physical Theatre (Eastern European ensemble theatre; European dance theatre).
Dance and theatre training.
Body-based and interdisciplinary methodologies of performance making.
History and Theory of 20th and 21st Century European and American performance practice.
Critical perspectives: Phenomenology, ecology, feminism, postmodernism.
Embodied and interdisciplinary approaches to writing.
Tools for practice as research (PaR) methodologies and critical reflective writing.

Freelance movement teaching & coaching

As a freelancer, I have taught yoga in studios (Ground Yoga/Hourglass Coffee, The Well Garden) and (co-)facilitated various movement classes, workshops and community events with people from mixed backgrounds and abilities (Caxton Community Centre, DECODA Summer Dance Festival - Coventry, CON/Verge residency - Ponderosa, Germany, Chisenhale Dance Space, Tripspace, London Buddhist Arts Centre, Eilissos Theatre & Present Body - Athens).

In 2013, I was invited by Zoukak Theatre (Beirut) to do a residency at their Festival Sidewalks (sponsored by the British Council) and gave a workshop, talk & performance. In 2015, I co-organised the 2015 ECITE (European Contact Improvisation Teachers Exchange) in PAF, France and was responsible for the research strand of the festival.

As part of my Fellowship in Accessible Performance Practice (Rose Bruford College), I worked as a movement tutor and director for the D/deaf and disabled young artists of the Ensemble 2018 Train: Training Programme, GRAEAE. I was then invited to work as a movement director in the production Romeo and Juliet (Orange Tree Theatre, 2019, dir. Nathan Crossan-Smith) that toured secondary schools.