In this episode of dance moves people, we chat with alumni from Fabric's Centre for Advanced Dance Training (CAT). We explore their journeys in dance, reflecting on their experiences in the program and how it has shaped their careers. Each guest brings a unique perspective, sharing their stories of growth, transformation, and the importance of community in the dance world.

Featuring:

• Rickae Hewitt-Martin, the founder of Vehdance & Movement who began her dance journey as a young child in Derby. https://www.vehdanceandmovement.com/about-us
• Natifah White, a dance artist and self-archivist inspired by creative processes and work that explore speculative dance futures. https://fabric.dance/artist/natifah-white/
• Emma Sporton, a writer and artist. See some of her writing on the nottdance festival here: https://2025festival.nottdance.com/news/
• Aishani Gosh, a movement artist, choreographer and researcher https://nationaldancecats.co.uk/our-stories/aishani-ghosh/

Hosted by Fabric’s Producer of Learning, Dwayne Church-Simms.

For more information about Fabric’s CAT offer, visit https://fabric.dance/centre-for-advanced-training/

For more information on the national dance CAT programme, visit https://nationaldancecats.co.uk

Visit nottdance Festival

Visit Fabric Dance

Music by Tom Harris listeningspace.xyz/

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

Fabric is an Arts Council England, National Portfolio Organisation.

In the second part of this conversation, past and current nottdance curators Bill Gee, Jane Greenfield, Nicky Napier and Paul Russ talk with De Montfort PhD student and Organisational Archive Researcher Andi Johnson about the innovative programming and curatorial processes that have shaped the festival over the years.

nottdance is a festival of extraordinary dance, presenting choreographic ideas and works from across the city of Nottingham and around the world, asking "What can dance be?"

The festival has always embraced experimentation, inviting radical perspectives and listening to artists working in ways that don’t fit the traditional, choreographic mould.

In the 2025 edition, nottdance asks: How do we each perceive time? What does it feel like to belong? And whose stories are being told? Inhabiting the city’s theatres, galleries, shopping centres and outdoor spaces, the works reflect and celebrate our city and the world in which we live, with and for our communities near and far.

Visit nottdance Festival

Andi Johnson (They/Them) is the Organisational Archive Researcher for Fabric. Alongside this, Andi is a PhD student at De Montfort University in Leicester.

Bill Gee (He/Him) works as a programmer, festival director, project producer, strategist, and researcher specialising in arts in the public space. He’s been doing something similar for the past 38 years since starting his professional life in the East Midlands at the end of the 1980s. Bill currently works with Activate; 101 Outdoor Arts; Bloomsbury Festival; Nature Calling; Jyll Bradley; R&D Studios, and as Access Support worker for Julian Rudd.

Jane Greenfield (She/Her) has had an extensive arts career spanning over 30 years. Beginning in the mid-80s as Dance Animateur in Norfolk and Derbyshire, she went on to work at Nottingham Playhouse and Nottinghamshire Next Stage. In 1994 she became Director of Dance 4 and two years later, the Director of nottdance. From Dance4, Jane broadened her curatorial practice and worked across the live/performance and visual art sectors, including for Home Live Art and the National Trust's Trust New Art programme. Currently she works as Creative Producer for Culture Creative, an international arts & events company working in the realms of large-scale outdoor events and Winter light trails.

Nicky Napier (She/Her) has over thirty years of experience in the dance and performance sector and works in a freelance capacity as a curator, executive producer and dramaturg. She is currently interim Director at Independent Dance and was previously Head of Dance and Performance at the Southbank Centre, programming dance and performance across the entire site. Nicky trained at Trinity Laban, has an MA Dramaturgy from Birkbeck and an MA Popular Culture from the Open University, and was Artistic Director at Dance4 and the nottdance Festival from 2004-2008. She is currently Chair of Ben Duke’s Lost Dog and will shortly become Co-Chair of Chishenhale Dance Space.

Paul Russ (He/Him) is Artistic Director and CEO of FABRIC, the dance development organisation based in the Midlands, UK. Paul was Chair of Nottingham 2023, the City’s European Capital of Culture bid and Chair of Nottingham Strategic Cultural Partnership. Paul has held many non-Executive roles in third sector organisations and has participated in international advisory panels and forums.

Visit nottdance Festival

Visit Fabric Dance

Music by Tom Harris listeningspace.xyz/

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

Fabric is an Arts Council England, National Portfolio Organisation.

In the first part of a conversation with past and current curators of the nottdance festival, Andi Johnson, De Montfort PhD student and Organisational Archive Researcher, focuses on the festival's rich history and its significant role in shaping the dance landscape in Nottingham and beyond.

nottdance is a festival of extraordinary dance, presenting choreographic ideas and works from across the city of Nottingham and around the world, asking "What can dance be?"

The festival has always embraced experimentation, inviting radical perspectives and listening to artists working in ways that don’t fit the traditional, choreographic mould.

In the 2025 edition, nottdance asks: How do we each perceive time? What does it feel like to belong? And whose stories are being told? Inhabiting the city’s theatres, galleries, shopping centres and outdoor spaces, the works reflect and celebrate our city and the world in which we live, with and for our communities near and far.

Visit nottdance Festival

Andi Johnson (They/Them) is the Organisational Archive Researcher for Fabric. Alongside this, Andi is a PhD student at De Montfort University in Leicester.

Bill Gee (He/Him) works as a programmer, festival director, project producer, strategist, and researcher specialising in arts in the public space. He’s been doing something similar for the past 38 years since starting his professional life in the East Midlands at the end of the 1980s. Bill currently works with Activate; 101 Outdoor Arts; Bloomsbury Festival; Nature Calling; Jyll Bradley; R&D Studios, and as Access Support worker for Julian Rudd.

Jane Greenfield (She/Her) has had an extensive arts career spanning over 30 years. Beginning in the mid-80s as Dance Animateur in Norfolk and Derbyshire, she went on to work at Nottingham Playhouse and Nottinghamshire Next Stage. In 1994 she became Director of Dance 4 and two years later, the Director of nottdance.

From Dance4, Jane broadened her curatorial practice and worked across the live/performance and visual art sectors, including for Home Live Art and the National Trust's Trust New Art programme. Currently she works as Creative Producer for Culture Creative, an international arts & events company working in the realms of large-scale outdoor events and Winter light trails.

Nicky Napier (She/Her) has over thirty years of experience in the dance and performance sector and works in a freelance capacity as a curator, executive producer and dramaturg. She is currently interim Director at Independent Dance and was previously Head of Dance and Performance at the Southbank Centre, programming dance and performance across the entire site. Nicky trained at Trinity Laban, has an MA Dramaturgy from Birkbeck and an MA Popular Culture from the Open University, and was Artistic Director at Dance4 and the nottdance Festival from 2004-2008. She is currently Chair of Ben Duke’s Lost Dog and will shortly become Co-Chair of Chishenhale Dance Space.

Paul Russ (He/Him) is Artistic Director and CEO of FABRIC, the dance development organisation based in the Midlands, UK. Paul was Chair of Nottingham 2023, the City’s European Capital of Culture bid and Chair of Nottingham Strategic Cultural Partnership. Paul has held many non-Executive roles in third sector organisations and has participated in international advisory panels and forums.

Visit nottdance Festival

Visit Fabric Dance

Music by Tom Harris listeningspace.xyz/

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

Fabric is an Arts Council England, National Portfolio Organisation.

Fat Dance | Dança Gorda is funded by the British Council’s International Collaboration Grants, designed to support UK and overseas organisations to collaborate on international arts projects. FABRIC is a lead partner, alongside Corpo Rastreado (BR).

The project was instigated by the artists, and Fabric was thrilled to be invited into that process.

Jussara Belchior (BR) is a fat ballerina who also works as a choreographer, a collaborator in other artists’ projects, and a researcher of practices and writings in contemporary dance. Jussara's work deals with fat people, fatness and non-normative bodies, with a particular interest in the poetics and politics of movement and positioning yourself through dance. She has a PhD in Theatre, researching fat activism, and co-founded Escrita Performativa (2019 - ), a collective interested in academic artistic writing. She has worked in partnership with Anderson do Carmo, Coletivo CIDA, Selvática Ações Artísticas, Simone Fortes, Daniela Alves, Marcos Klann, and others. She was part of MANADA (2018 - 2022), a collective of fat artists, and was a member of Grupo Cena 11 Cia de Dança (2007 – 2017).

Magdalena Hutter (DE) is a documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, and photographer. A graduate of the HFF Munich, she has been making films since 2007 and teaching filmmaking since 2012. In her documentary film work, her focus is on projects about art and artists, as well as on themes of belonging. In her teaching, she has worked with groups ranging from teenagers to older adults, with an emphasis on documentary filmmaking as empowerment for queer and refugee youth.

In addition to her work as a filmmaker, Magdalena is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Studies in Society and Culture at Concordia University in Montreal/Tioh'tà:ke. In her research, Magdalena uses documentary film, conversations/oral histories, and movement research, and works with fat performers to highlight the knowledge that their respective practices can offer, as well as the knowledge that emerges when these practices are brought into conversation with her own work in film.

Gillie Kleiman (UK) creates experimental dance and performance work. For the past 17 years, she has been making shows, texts, events, and encounters at venues ranging from theatres and dance festivals to art galleries and community spaces. Her work for audiences aims to make contemporary dance more accessible, give people tools to engage with art confidently, and find new ways to share complex ideas, often by involving non-professionals in the performances themselves.

Certain themes appear throughout Gillie's work: friendship, the role and value of non-professional performers, the relationship between work and play, singing and songs, and carefully structured improvisation. She's fascinated by what makes dance special—both for dancers and audiences—and often brings out the playfulness and humor in these experiences.

For the past five years, Gillie has focused particularly on dance and fatness. This appears in her writing (including academic research), community projects (such as a long-term collaboration with four non-professional fat dancers in Newcastle), initiatives within the arts sector, and her choreography.

Visit Magdalena Hutter

Visit Gillie Kleiman

Visit nottdance Festival

Visit Fabric Dance

Music by Tom Harris listeningspace.xyz/

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

Fabric is an Arts Council England, National Portfolio Organisation.

Alan Lyddiard is on a mission to create, with others, extraordinary performances and build long-lasting relationships with older people, locally, nationally, and internationally.

He retired in 2014 at the age of 65 and went to live in Spain. He was bored after two weeks and decided to set up The Performance Ensemble, a company of older artists, with founding chair, Mandy Stewart. He settled in Leeds and started working at Leeds Playhouse with their older person project, Heydays.
Since then, the company has gone from strength to strength. They are now the first permanent ensemble of older artists regularly funded by Arts Council England.

Alan will be working with people from Nottingham on nottdance as Place, an afternoon of nottdance past, present and future, woven together through exhibition, live performance and conversation.

2025festival.nottdance.com/event/nottdance-as-place/

For more information on their work, visit theperformanceensemble.com

Lucy Suggate is a dance artist based in Yorkshire, working in performance, making, education, dramaturgy, and mentoring. Her work highlights how movement – dance – choreography can respond to the ongoing age of crisis and prolonged uncertainty by focusing on embodied practices and the physical and perceptual shifts that occur when engaged in long-term moving and thinking.

Visit lucysuggate.com

Visit nottdance Festival

Visit Fabric Dance

Music by Tom Harris listeningspace.xyz/

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

Fabric is an Arts Council England, National Portfolio Organisation.

Cool Company is a dance improvisation ensemble for people aged 55 and over, based in Nottingham Contemporary. Referencing current exhibitions, they explore and develop relationships between visual arts and movement. Key to these workshops is the integration of social and creative elements, which empower the work of the group. Workshops are facilitated by Deane McQueen, professional choreographer, director and Backlit Gallery Studio artist.

Lucy Suggate is working with Cool Company during nottdance 2025 to present Tender Stones. For more information and tickets, visit the festival website.

Visit Cool Company Dance and Movement Workshops at Nottingham Contemporary

The Houdini club (Deane McQueen)

the houdini club has a membership of one, created and donated by french surrealist Allain Prillard who recognised them in a past life. the houdini club is a neon sign active when lit. the houdini club thinks, collaborates, makes, shares, exits, panics, disappears and returns. Escapes completed, yet to be achieved. Recorded details in misplaced notebooks never found. No archive. No social media. Present. Live. the houdini club is about connections and relationships, severing, rupturing and sometime continuity. The artist does not wish be seen, not recognised. Absent.

Lucy Suggate is a dance artist based in Yorkshire, working in performance, making, education, dramaturgy, and mentoring. Her work highlights how movement – dance – choreography can respond to the ongoing age of crisis and prolonged uncertainty by focusing on embodied practices and the physical and perceptual shifts that occur when engaged in long-term moving and thinking.

Visit lucysuggate.com

Visit nottdance Festival

Visit Fabric Dance

Music by Tom Harris listeningspace.xyz/

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

Fabric is an Arts Council England, National Portfolio Organisation.

Welcome to dance moves people, a podcast from Fabric.

Fabric is a strategic dance development organisation based in the Midlands, UK, with sites in the cities of Birmingham and Nottingham.

In these conversations, we invite artists, partners, collaborators, and friends to share their stories about Fabric, the sector, and what dance choreography and art mean to them, ultimately revealing the social value of dance.

Please like and subscribe on your usual podcast platform.

Visit nottdance Festival

Visit Fabric Dance

Music by Tom Harris listeningspace.xyz

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

Fabric is an Arts Council England, National Portfolio Organisation.

This is the second episode in a series of one-hour ‘In Conversation with’ zoom sessions, inviting Critical Mass leads and organisers to share the story of their role in the project, how the experience has influenced/changed their practice and 3 key learning points they want to share with dance professionals interested in working inclusively.

This episode includes Rachel Liggitt who was the Inclusion Champion on Critical Mass 2022.

Learn more about the Dance Leaders Group here
Learn more about Critical Mass here