MOVERS SHAKERS MAKERS

What do you think of when you think of Ireland? The Emerald Isle, Guinness, Oscar Wilde and Riverdance? What about women making dance? Because this tiny island turns out loads of them--just over 80% of recent dance bursary awardees were for women making work. In a time when the dance world is confronting the predominance of men in roles of leadership, what is Ireland getting right? Is it ahead of...

Ahead of our first roundtable discussion with six women making dance in Ireland, Emma Lister and cohost Zoë Ashe-Browne give a (tiny) bit of Irish history and pose the driving question of this new mini series: In a time when the conversation in dance often turns to the predominance of men in roles of leadership, why are there so many women choreographing  in Ireland? Zoë Ashe-Browne  is the winner...

Dolly Brown is a photographer who specialises in documenting art and artists. She may be best known as her Instagram alterego: @londonlivingdoll . She's worked with The Royal Ballet, Barbican, Tate Modern, Trisha Brown Dance Company, BalletBoyz, Mark Morris Dance Group among many others and has exhibited in the London galleries such as Mother, Plinth, London Institute of Photography and Galer...

Kalle Nio is a magician and visual artist based in Finland. He is co-drector/founder of the theatre company WHS and the recipient of numerous awards including the Finnish state prize for Multidisciplinary Art and the Helsinki Cultural Prize. In this episode he and host Emma Lister discuss Lähtö (Départ), a beautiful, uncategorizable theatre piece which he directs and performs in, as well as the co...

In the final episode of our three part miniseries, we zoom in to meet three dancers. They are all at different stages of their careers and their lives have been affected in different ways by the pandemic: GEAROID: 18 months into his professional career he is leaving his company job in Zurich. But, with the pandemic looming it is not the ideal time to go job hunting… TIA: A mid career freelancer, T...

The last 18 months have been a trying time for everyone’s mental health. But how have dancers been uniquely affected? A group of artists whose lives and identities are notoriously tied up in training and career—what happened when the theatres went dark and the studios fell silent? Through interviews with a range of dancers, host Emma Lister explores mental health during the pandemic— taking in dep...

In this, the first episode of our mini-series Dance in the Time of Corona , Emma Lister is joined by cohosts Zoë Ashe-Browne and Shelby Williams. They reveal the results of a survey they conducted after the controversial Venice Biennale College Danza audition call and the ensuing movement: #payyourdancers.  The survey was open to ALL professional dancers, past and present. Respondents represented...

Adrian Berry is Artistic Director of the UK's leading circus and arts centre, Jacksons Lane. He is also a producer, writer and director and wrote and directed the successful stage play From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads, which toured the UK racking up 143 shows and has recently been released as a spoken word album on iTunes.  He spoke to Emma from a North London park about  the newly renovated...

Stina Quagebeur is the associate choreographer and a first artist at English National Ballet. Nora, her first mainstage choreographic work for ENB, was based on Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House and premiered at Sadler's Wells in 2019. Since then she has been choreographing steadily for the company; most recently the duet Hollow and the raucous  Take Five Blues, both of which finally ha...

Manjinder Virk is an actor, writer and director. As an actor she can currently be seen on The Beast Must Die with Jared Harris and Cush Jumbo on Britbox, and is shooting Jed Mercurio’s Trigger Point for ITV. On film she stars in the documentary The Arbor , for which she received acting nominations from the BFI and British Independent Film Awards. As a writer director one of her works, a short film...

Season 3 of MOVERS SHAKERS MAKERS is out now! Featuring a new set of interviews with fascinating artists and the mini-series: DANCE IN THE TIME OF CORONA. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen... www.makeshiftcompany.com

In the last episode of series 2, Emma talks to Alice Williamson--a difficult artist to categorise. Essentially, she works with movement and design, be it making costumes or dancewear for her label Designed by Alice, her photography and illustrative work, toy design, research on 'skin hunger' or her collaboration with Dr. Merrit Moore combining robotics and dance. Her design work begun wh...

Juggler Sean Gandini and his partner Kati Ylä-Hokkala have built one of the UK’s most successful contemporary circus companies: Gandini Juggling. Gandini has directed multiple full length circus pieces: Spring , 4x4: Ephemeral Architectures, Sigma and of course Smashed , their Pina Bausch inspired mega-hit that has toured the world. He also has the Olivier Award winning Philip Glass opera Akhnaten...

Why is the bullying of boys who want to take ballet so persistent? Emma Lister seeks to answer this question and why their love of dance is often defended with the usual football comparison/"real men lift women" trope.  In the final episode of of our mini-series, Ballet for the Twenty-first Century, we'll open up topics such as: body image, casting, role models, gendered ballet tech...

In this episode of MOVERS SHAKERS MAKERS mini-series, Ballet for the Twenty-first Century, Emma Lister and guest Phil Chan discuss his first book Final Bow for Yellowface: Dancing Between Intention and Impact , and his upcoming work, Shades of the Orient , in which Chan supports his claim that Orientalism is one of the major pillars of classical ballet. He puts forward some constructive solutions...

In part II of our episode on mental health and the classically trained ballet dancer, Emma Lister talks to counsellor (and ex-dancer) Terry Hyde. They discuss the symptoms and triggers of panic attacks and depression, the loss of identity that plagues dancers when they leave the profession and the danger of pushing your feelings away. Terry also speak frankly about how the dance world needs to ‘ca...

Emma Lister and cohost Zoë Ashe-Browne released a 30 question survey about ballet dancers' mental health. They never expected the response it got--hundreds of classically trained dancers filled it out. This is obviously a topic we need to talk about! In this, the first episode of MOVERS SHAKERS MAKERS ballet mini-series, they reveal some of the statistics collected, the stories shared and spe...

Performance poet, Piers Harrison-Reid rose to national visibility with a poem that bridged two of the UK’s greatest institutions: The National Health Services and the BBC. The poem Love is for the Brave , an ode to the NHS was commissioned by the BBC and has garnered a million views and counting across various platforms. With roots in hip hop, dub and slam poetry Piers’ poems are often vehicle for...

Monique Jonas is still only at the beginning of her dance career and she’s already worked with Rambert Dance, Kim Brandstrup, New Adventures and Richard Alston Dance Company. Not only that, but she’s also started her own company-- Jona Dance Company .  She talks to Emma Lister about how aged 6 a twist of fate introduced her to dance, the frustrations that led her to start her own company, as well...

Kellie Shirley knows about the highs and lows of being an actor in Britain. She chats to Emma Lister about resisting early pressure to shed her accent, her big break in a film that no one saw and  how she "went back to square one" before landing a dream job. Fame came knocking in the 00's with a reoccurring role on Britain's beloved soap, Eastenders (BBC), but with it came the...

We're back for a second season with more fascinating chats with artists! Mid-season we also have our first mini-series: Ballet for the Twenty First Century. We'll be doing a deep dive on three issues in ballet that need updating. This season of MOVERS SHAKERS MAKERS has been made possible by grants from the Norfolk Arts Project Fund and using public funding by the National Lottery throug...

In the last episode of our inaugural season Emma Lister speaks to actor Rhoda Ofori-Attah. Born in Ghana but raised in the UK, Rhoda trained at the Oxford School of Drama. Some of her credits include: The Bill (ITV), Coronation Street (ITV), Silent Witness (BBC), Cold Feet (ITV) and Informer (BBC) among many others. She plays Miss Griffiths in the new season of the BAFTA nominated show Top Boy (Ne...

Finnish circus artist Sakari Männistö is a performer recognised for his innovative, technical juggling. In this week’s podcast, he and Emma Lister discuss the solitary nature of juggling practice, his most memorable performance and what he did when he lost all the footage during the making of his cult video Juggle Doll (with no back up)! They also discuss his new project UNUM, as well as Jong , hi...

As ‘Chula the Clown’, Gabriela Muñoz has performed all over the world with her hit show Perhaps, Perhaps, Quizas. She discusses it and why ten years on she felt ready to make her newest show, DIRT! She also discusses her work with charitable organisations that bring laughter and clown workshops to areas of conflict, and how her interactions with the people she met there forever informed her approa...

Emma speaks to Guy Hoare, the British lighting designer whose striking work has appeared at the Royal Opera House, Sadler’s Wells, The Old Vic, Donmar Warehouse and many other world-famous stages. They discuss how he sees lighting as an extension of dramaturgy, the creativity of science and how he shaped the light for Arthur Pita’s The Metamorphosis and Alexander Whitley Dance Company’s Overflow ....