SLOW RIFFS / FIVE STAGES OF YES

ARTISTS

Heidi trained as a dancer and holds an MRes (Distinction) in Advanced Practices from Goldsmiths University with the project “Queer Choreo Curation– off-score, wobbles and conviviality,” supervised by Irit Rogoff. She is currently part of the artist cohort at Rose Choreographic School at Sadler’s Wells in London, directed by Martin Hargreaves

Since 2000, Heidi has collaborated with Hanna Gillgren under H2DANCE, adopting a transdisciplinary choreographic approach. Together, they have co-created nine full-length international touring performances co-produced by partners in the UK and Nordic countries, alongside various shorter works and commissions. In 2018, H2DANCE initiated and has since curated Fest en Fest, an international festival of expanded choreography that presents Nordic and British artists in the southeast of London, Cambridge, and Colchester.

At the Rose Choreographic School, Heidi continues her queering strategy of working off-score. She is developing a series of works for galleries that explore using just one single note as choreographic material, co-produced by ICA London and Bergen Kunsthall NO. Since 2017, H2DANCE has created two choreographic works entitled Amplified Edition, which centres objects from the black box and the gallery as primary choreographic materials, co-produced by Rosendal Teater, Black Box Teater, DansiT NO, Dansens Hus SE, Dance4, MetalCulture, Roehampton University, and Trinity Laban, UK. These works tour alongside H2DANCE’s participatory work “Strangers & Others/Vi & Oss & Andre” (2017/21), the extended Place Prize piece “DUET” (2013), and their immersive voice and movement work “SAY SOMETHING” (2011).

H2DANCE has presented their works at venues and festivals such as Sadler’s Wells, Dance Umbrella, The Place, Battersea Arts Centre, Nottdance Festival, Dance4, APT Gallery, and Trinity Laban in the UK, as well as Rosendal Teater, Multiple dansefestival, Høstscena NO, La Villette Paris FR, Kanonhallen Copenhagen DK, Monty Antwerp BE, Dock11 Berlin DE, and Mengi Reykjavik IS.

In October 2004, Heidi won the Shrinking Cities competition (German Federal Cultural Foundation and Archplus) in Germany with the project “Cow – the udder way,” in collaboration with Ulrike Steven (artist/architect), Gareth Morris (architect), Susanne Thomas (choreographer), Eike Sindlinger (architect), and Paul Cotter (filmmaker). This project was shown at DAZ (The German Architectural Centre) and Leipzig Gallery of Contemporary Arts in the autumn of 2005 and toured New York, Detroit, Cleveland, Manchester, Dortmund, and Montreal.

In 2021-22, Heidi was commissioned by emilyn claid to co-create the work “Untitled,” which also resulted in the work “SKINNED,” currently touring with an original sound score by Planningtorock. In addition Heidi has delivered commissions for The Place, The Victoria & Albert Museum, Natural History Museum in London, Digital, North Kent Local Authority Arts Partnership and Surrey Dance Collective and for students at Trinity Laban, Transitions and Trinity Laban Dance Collective (TLDC), London Contemporary Dance School, and The National Centre for Circus Arts, Dance, The National Centre for Circus Arts, CAT (centre for advanced training), London Metropolitan University, Dartington College of Arts, London Studio Centre and Manchester Metropolitan University.

As a performer, Heidi has worked for companies such as Duckie, Clod Ensemble, Seven Sisters Group, Colin Poole, and Silence Crossing.

Heidi is currently a research-active lecturer in choreography at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and lectures in Choreography and Dance Practice at Roehampton University.

Ross is a sound designer, engineer and interactive technologist working in professional, educational and corporate environments for the last 10 years. After completing his BA Hons in Creative Music Technology with Digital Arts at the University of Hull, in 2008 Ross began working as a studio technician as well as developing his own creative practice. After gaining experience in project and production management as technical co-ordinator at the Barbican Centre in London, since 2015, he has been pursuing a freelance career in sound, video and interactive system design for contemporary performance, post-production, and technical delivery for theatre and live art installations. In 2017, he began working heavily with interactive technologies, collaborating with artists as a programmer using MAX/msp and Arduino platforms to create sound and video installations driven from real world inputs such as body movement, machinery and elements of nature. Since 2019, Ross has been working heavily with ambisonics, producing soundtracks for VR / 360 film / immersive storytelling podcasts, working with binaural recording and post production techniques, to create spatial accurate and imagined sonic environments.

Laura is an artist, dancer, and facilitator. Their work centres land and its relations and is shared as performance, textile, sound, film and writing. They are a member of transnational artist collective Decolonising Botany, hold a PhD in Fine Art, and are currently founding Two Rivers – a platform for weaving rites of passage with ancestral healing practices, asking how land guides abolitionist futures. They have performed over the years in their own work and for others including Isabel Lewis and Sylvia Palacios Whitman.www.lauraburns.co.uk 

Ese is championed by Iggy Pop, Lena Dunham, Cerys Matthews, Jools Holland, Alabama 3 and many more, ESE & THE VOODUU PEOPLE play an electric and eclectic blend of funk, soul, Afrobeat, jazz and rock’n’roll, and tap into deep wells of spiritual energy.

Singer-songwriter and guitarist Ese was born to make music. “I heard Voodoo Child by Jimi Hendrix and never looked back,” she says, and though raised as a London child on grunge, hip-hop and r’n’b, her Nigerian heritage’s traditional spirituality also shaped the artist she is today. “It was almost like music chose me, rather than I chose music,” Ese says.

Ese busked on the streets of London for a couple of years before finding a place for herself in the studio and on stages ranging from intimate pubs and clubs to heaving festivals. She has released two acclaimed studio albums, UP IN SMOKE and IS THIS JAZZ? and the live MERCURY IN RETROGRADE. She performed in 2025’s hit Netflix series TOO MUCH and her classic DYNAMITE features on the soundtrack album alongside tracks by artists ranging from Nina Simone, John Cale and Richard and Linda Thompson to Sugababes and Cate Le Bon. 

Her new studio album is scheduled for a 2026 release.

Martin is a dramaturg and writer, his interests vacillate between boredom and hysteria. His research connects around performance and performativity and includes the recent histories of contemporary dance, queering practices and camp misunderstandings. Before taking up the Head of Choreographic School role, Martin was the Editor of Dance Theatre Journal and Programme Leader of the MA Body in Performance at Laban, and the Director of Research and Postgraduate Courses at London Contemporary Dance School. He has a visiting lecturer post at Stockholm University of the Arts and has also lectured and examined at institutions across the UK and Europe.