My Work
Dance and the Early Years
Why Early Years?
Since 1999, I have explored dance and movement with young children. Although my practice spans all ages, I have always been especially drawn to working with babies and toddlers. The experiences and development of an infant — from pre-birth onwards — continue to inform and shape all aspects of my work.
Early years dance offers an expansive and ever-evolving field of practice. There are countless ways to explore and share movement with young children, and this continual process of discovery remains central to my approach.
At the heart of the work is creating safe, meaningful connections with participants, whether in an ongoing relationship or a single encounter. In those moments of shared movement, I stop seeing children simply as babies or toddlers and instead meet them as collaborators in dance.
My work in early years frequently includes parents, carers, educators and volunteers, and over many years has expanded into fully inclusive intergenerational workshops. These have taken place with Ivy Street Family Centre in Hackney, the V&A Museum, Wilderness Festival, and within sheltered housing schemes.
I have also developed long-term relationships with two East London nursery schools, spanning 16 and 10 years respectively, where my practice is deeply embedded within the life of each setting.
A film by Cai Tomos, created during my residency for the Acorn Project at Kay Rowe Nursery School, can be viewed here.
My chapter, Listening Body, appears in Language, Place and the Body in Early Childhood. Published by Routledge in 2025.
In 2023, I led an Introduction to Dance and Early Years day as part of People Dancing’s Summer Intensive.
A film by Cai Tomos, created during my residency for the Acorn Project at Kay Rowe Nursery School, can be viewed here
Since January 2019 I have been dance artist in residence at The Magpie Project, a project for mums and under 5s suffering in temporary or insecure housing.
We have been exploring what it means for the project as a whole to be somatically informed as well as trauma and psychologically informed. Read our blog about this here
During the Autumn period of the pandemic 2020, we made 8 films for the families. View them on YouTube here
These films continue to underpin so much of the training I share and deliver and continue to be a resource for the families.
Read about my pre-pandemic work in blog posts here and here a short film made by Roswitha Chesher can be viewed here.
I was invited to write a piece for People Dancing's Animated magazine. Read it here
Since 2018 I have been an artist for Move Dance Feel, a project for women affected by cancer founded by Emily Jenkins.
In April 2026 we celebrated 10 years of Move Dance Feel, premiering a new film watch the trailer
This film was made during a summer intensive in 2019 by Alice Underwood.
In 2021 Emily Jenkins and I, collaborated on an event for People Dancing's Perspective's on Practice programme entitled Women Dancing With Women - reflecting on practice in specific contexts.
I am an associate artist for Rosetta Life. In collaboration with participants living with brain injury, artists and musicians, the project works towards sharings and performances to explore the benefits of the arts for those with neurological conditions.
I have led workshops for the Ambassadors; weekly sessions for patients at The Pulross Centre, Guys & St Thomas's Hospital; Accelerate - a project for people living with lymphedema based at St Joseph's Hospice; and for patients at the National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery.
I presented this case study at the conference Stoke Odysseys: Performance Arts & Health: celebrating Hope and Recovery for Rosetta Life at Kings College, London in November 2018.
A few highlights
I have been fortunate to work for numerous organisations and collaborated with many artists, organisations and producers. If you would like to know more about my work, please don't hesitate to get in touch.
For 5 years I was working alongside artist Cai Tomos at Chelsea & Westmister Hospital for their charity, CW+ Read an insight into the work here
For The Dance Network Association I have led early years, intergenerational and older adult workshops as well as numerous training days and workshops at conferences and events. Their programmes Active Familes and Active Start were both originally devised and led by me. For Active Start, London Borough of Barking & Dagenahm invited me to write an early years teacher's toolkit. Please contact me for further information.
This short film was made by James Williams and the accompanying research by Elsa Urmston.
This film was a collaboration with photographer Rachel Cherry and the participants of Re-Generation, The Dance Network Association's older adult programme.
I was a Critical Friend of the Royal Opera House supporting the development of their Dots programme, ballet for babies and toddlers which launched October 2018. Read about it here
I collaborated with Anita Wadsworth and Sophie Stanford of SLiDE at St Christopher's Hospice. We led workshops and co-created a solo with patients, which I performed at the event Living, Loving and Dying. The solo was also performed at the conference Facing Death Creatively in October 2016.
See the film made by Sophie Stanford about the project here