Simon Whitehead

Originally a geographer, I trained as a dancer in London and New York in the early nineties, returning to Wales in 1993. I am a movement artist and, therefore, I am interested in all forms of movement – ​​the human and beyond the human. My practice is based in improvisation and responds to the circumstances I face; my work moves with land, materials, the weather and other beings. I’m a maker who moves and I work in communities, with students, artists, ecologists and, at times, with other species. I am interested in the way we deepen our relationships with each other and the earth by moving and feeling together. 

Focusing on the feeling and sensing aspects of human experience, my practice is about the need to cultivate kind and embodied ways of being with ourselves and others when moving through a setting. I do this by composing movement scores, making field recordings, walks, pilgrimages, workshops and performances shared with different communities; proposals for embodiment and the ‘Arts of noticing’.

 

As a member of Maynard Abercych – a rural collective of interdisciplinary artists operating from a small village in Pembrokeshire – we work through a series of ongoing residencies, curating village dance, workshops, and local and international partnerships. Here, we are interested in the way in which engagement with dance and movement reveals the complexity of ‘community’. We ask: what is the nature of the communities that emerge when dancing together? And how do we provide activities to enable these communities and understandings to develop in a rural area? Communities that include the ‘more than human’ beings we live amongst.

 

At the moment, I offer a process of mentoring one-to-one or in small groups, a kind of ‘ Creative Companionship’ , to artists at all stages of their careers. This includes dialogue through relational movement practice in various landscapes, together with embodied methods of working and moving with the material reality of a location or ecosystem (an opportunity to engage more deeply and find support for practice at this time, see website for details).