Jacky Lansley was due to be in residency at iC4C during Dance4’s summer programme but due to recent events has been developing her project We Are Animals remotely.

We Are Animals is a research project led by choreographer/director Jacky Lansley with artist/researchers: Fergus Early, Jreena Green, Esther Huss, Ingrid Mackinnon and Tim Taylor and in dialogue with academic researchers: Professor Ramsey Burt and Dr ‘Funmi Adewole from De Montfort University (DMU).

Working with creative and imaginative dance and performance strategies, Jacky and the research team have been looking at some of the ways in which contemporary human life separates us from our own animal subjectivity and the other animals we share the planet with. They have gathered a wide range of images, references, and metaphors of human/animal dances and rituals from different cultures and eras to explore how the narrative of human/animal hybridity is deep within us.

Working with a variety of improvisatory, dance and performance techniques the team have been exploring ‘embodying’ other animals and observing our own instinctual reflexes and gestures, towards a re-remembering that we are bipedal animals.

Collaborating with esteemed partners Dance4 and DMU, We Are Animals will open up this important conversation across different communities utilising Dance Research Studio’s (DRS) unique interdisciplinary methodologies. It will combine studio and site-specific research at DRS and Dance4/iC4C with a thematically linked programme of talks, CPD workshops and sharings.

Click here to see the latest developments of We Are Animals.

Find out more about the artists and collaborators here.