Further information

After training in Dance Theatre at Laban, London in the late 1990s, I've spent the last 20+ years establishing a sustainable arts practice and a reputation as a rigorous, generous collaborator and a co-creator of original, engaging events and significant shared experiences.  My work is rooted in improvisation, and often situated in visual/ contemporary arts contexts.  The practice of Contact Improvisation, and the questions that arise through improvising with others - in and out of physical contact - over more than twenty years, inform my approach to moving and making and, more widely, to paying attention to people and environments, and to being alongside difference. 

Alongside live performance and interaction, I am often engaged with digital and moving image forms, particularly video, and with online platforms for collaboration and exchange, enabling me to build long-term international partnerships as well as valuing and maintaining my local roots.  Always curious, in process and alive to the possibility of change, my current work centres around:

- collaboration, in many forms

- body and environment/ body as environment

- the screen as a site for process-led choreographic practice

- performance-making that connects people and place

...and generally inciting people to have a proper knees-up - remembering and being reminded that we are bodies that like to move.

Teaching

Alongside freelance work as a dancer, choreographer, researcher and project manager for interdisciplinary arts events, teaching is integral to my creative practice.  I have extensive experience of lecturing and research in Higher Education including for Bath Spa University, Brighton University, University of Bristol, Dartington College of Arts and, most recently, Falmouth University (2015 - 2021), where I specialised in practical and theoretical approaches to choreography & screen media, and site-based performance making, and shared the role of Course Leader for the BA (Hons) Dance & Choreography programme.  I continue to teach regularly in grassroots community and peer-led professional arts contexts, and I support and mentor other artists at all career stages.

Screendance

I have an MA in Visual Performance (Time-based Media) from Dartington College of Arts, and a PhD, exploring the screen as a site for choreographic practice, from the University of Bristol's Department of Drama: Theatre, Film, Television.  Since 2011, I've been a founder member of the Screendance Network, an international network of artists and researchers engaged in dance and screen media practices; between 2019 - 2022 I was Editor of the International Journal on Screendance, working with the Editorial Board to hold a space for discourse at the intersection of dance and screen media practices.

Singing

In 2017, through a chance encounter with singer, composer, and living legend Vicky Abbott during WildWorks' production of Wolf's Child at Trelowarren, Cornwall, I established a fascination with singing and voice work.  I then trained intensively with and performed in projects led by Vicky, including singing with the alt-country acapella Blazing Heart Chorus, and with Tuesday Night Fun Club performance choir.  In 2018, I sang in WildWorks' 100: UnEarth at the Lost Garden of Heligan, and in 2019, with Seamas Carey, Vicky Abbott and TNFC in Seamas Carey meets his 4 Year Old Self directed by Aga Blonska and performed at CAST, The Exchange, Kneehigh's Asylum and Bristol Old Vic.  In 2020, I began exploring collaborative vocal improvisation (CVI) and completed a six-month intensive training programme with Briony Greenhill, as well as beginning to consider my voice as a solo singer, to attempt to write material, and to learn about the recording process (all ongoing).  In 2021, I sang in the extraordinary Ordinalia.  In 2022, I sang with the acapella alt-country Woodshed Singers, and with singer-songwriter, Hannah Bullock.  So far, in 2023, I've sung with Hannah Bullock and Kath Buckler, supporting Kathryn Roberts & Sean Lakeman at the Tolmen Centre, Constantine; with Blazing Heart Chorus, sharing a bill with Men Are Singing as a fundraising event for Lafrowda in St Just; and in ReVoice, a participatory project presented at Tate St Ives, exploring intangible cultural heritage and our Cornish context, with Vicky Abbott and Tuesday Night Fun Club, directed by Agnieszka Blonska, produced by imPossible

HowNow

In 2021, I co-founded the dance-artist-led collective HowNow.  

HowNow is a collaboration between the three of us - Claud Tonietto, Kyra Norman, Winona Guy - to hold a space, in Cornwall, UK, for artists working with movement and dance to gather and share moving and thinking.  Our work is framed by the ongoing question: 'How do I / you / we want to make dance work, in this complex present moment? https://www.hownowcollective.co.uk/