Faculty

Ruth Douthwright is a dance artist and community instigator. Ruth’s formative education in folkloric, sacred dance and storytelling continues to influence her research and practices. Life long study and research has taken her to many places from L’École de danse contemporaine de Montréal with continued international studies at Laban (UK), The Kyoto Arts Centre (Japan) and The Nomadic College (Worldwide). Over the past two decades Ruth has been in collaboration with ​Sweet Labour Art Collective, formerly Strange Strangers, exploring un/settling participatory performances. Ruth is a founding member of the dance improvisation collective,​ Public ​Displays of​ Art and is currently developing ‘This Body of Work’ with The Sense Archive. From 2001-08 Ruth worked with ​l'inattendu compagnie ​(Belgium), ​ABCDC (France) and ​Dasein Dance​ (Ontario). In 2017 Ruth was commissioned by the London Arts Council, to develop programming for members of the disability and neurodiverse communities: Art of Remembering - McCormick Dementia Services, Togethering - L’Arche and Participation House, and Recovery Through the Arts - Parkwood Mental Health. In 2021/22 Ruth developed mindfulness programming with Dr Sarah Kim and Dr Kevin O’Connor through Unity Health Toronto. She is now developing support for breast cancer patients using dance improvisation methods based on her personal and ongoing journey.

Irineu Nogueira is a Brazilian artist, producer and social entrepreneur living in Munich via London. His approach incorporates eclectic references and experiences, combining contemporary dance techniques with the diversity of Afro-Brazilian culture to create a unique methodology for the body. He collaborates with major international names in dance, theatre, and music, and his work is often multidisciplinary, crossing into opera, theatre, musicals, cinema, and circus. He holds a Masters in Performance Design and Practice from Central Saint Martins (University of the Arts London). He was a dance teacher at The Place and Siobhan Davies Studios and has been a movement tutor for actors at the prestigious Guildhall School of Drama and Music in London. Irineu is also known for samba and Afro-Brazilian culture. He is a partner at Cria da Casa Productions and is the founder of tanzX Festival & Project, Bloco Serafina, Bambas Festival - A Movement and Music Festival, VOA Dance Retreat - A Dance Journey to Brazil, and the International Samba Congress Europe, held for the first time in the city of Munich in 2019. Irineu choreographs and leads dance workshops worldwide.

Kevin O’Connor (he/him/they) is a multidisciplinary artist working as a choreographer, dancer, improviser, circus artist and installation artist. He lives and makes work in London Ontario, Canada where he is from and also works in the San Francisco Bay area. He is involved in a decade-long artistic collective instigated with Ruth Douthwright and Billy Jack called Sweet Labour Art, exploring participatory de-colonizing performances within polluted watersheds in Ontario. Over the last few years, he has worked with NAKA dance in Oakland, Shakiri and Skywatchers in the Bay Area, Oncogrrrls feminist art collective in Spain, Nita Little, and collaborated with Inuit hunter and designer Paulette Metuq on a project in Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic. He is currently working on an improvisation piece called TRY with Ishmael Houston Jones, Keith Hennessey, Jose Abad, Snowflake Towers, and Gabriel Nunez de Arco. He completed an MFA in choreography and finished a Ph.D. in performance studies at UC Davis, where he researched the emerging 21st-century human biology named fascia, through a critical feminist science studies lens. He examined anatomies, body performance capacities, interventions, and imaginations in relation to science studies, including the material-bio-cultural tissue called fascia. Kevin works at the intersection of arts, sciences, ritual practices, practice-as-research, and improvisation theory and practice.

For the last eleven years Alysson Bruno has taught courses in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and North America, addressing the musicality of Candomblé and its reinterpretation in a new instrumental universe. Alysson acted as co-musical director of the show “Raízes” by Nação Maracatu Oju Oba in Paris in 2010. In 2014 he was co-musical director of the show “Terra Brasil” on tour in Holland with Dance Migration Company, where he is currently musical director. In 2018, he was assistant musical director for the dance company Gumboot Dance Brasil in their shows “Yebo” and “Subterrâneo”. He was also musical director and composer of the soundtrack for the show “Arquivo Negro - Passos largos em Caminhos Narrows” by Pé No Mundo Company, and in 2020 of the documentary “Inside My Skin”. In 2020 and 2021 he taught classes in the Postgraduate Course in Popular Percussion at Faculdade Santa Marcelina.

Damarise is a dancer, teacher, producer and choreographer. Since completing contemporary dance training in 2012, she has been studying dances of the African diaspora, specifically in Western and Southern Africa and Brazil. She teaches, directs, and produces dance/movement projects in Vancouver where she is based. She also facilitates creative arts programming for children in First Nations communities throughout Canada. She is currently conducting studio research in Vancouver for an interdisciplinary group performance project involving song, dance, and drumming. Damarise teaches in studios, community centres, and schools across Canada and internationally.

Camila Seeger is a dancer, movement educator and body awareness facilitator. She plays through contemporary dance, somatic and eco-somatic research, creative collaboration and local production. She studied performing arts at Universidad Mayor and modern dance in Centro de danza Espiral in Santiago de Chile. She then dove into contemporary dance and somatic practices in Europe and North America between 2008 and 2015, getting certified as an Axis Syllabus teacher in 2015. She has since been teaching and developing her work internationally. Currently Cami lives in Gamboa, Brasil, where she plays between motherhood, community, teaching, dancing, surfing, gardening, producing, writing, enjoying and none of that at the same time. She is an Access Bars and Energetic facelift practitioner, deeply interested in the study and practice of self-education, opening paradigms and noticing points of view. Since 2011 she has been creating "Fitness Awareness", converging body awareness and mindfulness into training with the idea of "fitting inside yourself". With her family she built up Studio TOCA, at Toca do Lagarto - a residential space and studio open to the local community and slowly growing international artistic residencies.