Diane Alison-Mitchell is a movement director and choreographer. Diane shares with Hotfoot the professional developmental work she commenced on the Trailblazers scheme and the impact this work has had on her practice. At the time of receiving the Trailblazers award I had shifted my attention from company work to focusing on my own development as a dancer. I began undertaking solo work performing pieces choreographed by Jackie Guy MBE and Christopher Walker of the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica at the Hip Festival in London between 2001 and 2003, and the High Fest International Festival in Armenia in 2005. I also worked with choreographer Guillermo Vera Davis performing in France, in 2003, a duet commissioned by the L’Ame de Cuba Festival.
This maturity of my own identity as a dancer culminated in me receiving the Trailblazers award. The award allowed me to undertake a period of development with South African choreographer and performer Vincent Sekwati Mantsoe, forging in me a deeper desire to enquire into the interconnection of movement and drama. After further touring with Movement Angol, Adzido Pan African Dance Ensemble and The Dance Movement, I gradually began looking into theatre practice. I went on to complete an MA in Movement Studies at Central School of Speech and Drama in 2008, with support from Dancers’ Career Development. I now train actors in movement at various drama schools across London. I also work as a movement director and theatre choreographer and was recently part of the London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony creative team.
My postgraduate studies marked a turning point for me. I immersed myself in actor movement principles researching how performance aesthetics found in African dance and music, for example, how ways in which the use of polyrhythm influence the rhythmical nature of characters, physical actions or dialogue, could develop the actor. It is lifelong research that I am continuously developing and have opportunities to draw on in the course of my work. I taught actor movement from an African perspective within a drama school, and I also movement directed the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Julius Caesar, which was set in an unidentified African state in the past 50 years.
I am fascinated by the processes involved in developing physical expressiveness, and work to achieve that through a great sense of play with professional and non-professional casts. I now use many different movement and dance styles in a range of contexts from classical and devised theatre, through to large scale events. I am ceaselessly unearthing new ways of working and gaining a wider appreciation of what is dance and movement. It is in part thanks to the Trailblazers award that I have been steered onto this path and I am grateful for it.
