Board of Trustees |

Board of Trustees

Steven Brett

Steven currently works for British Council as Theatre and Dance Programme Manager for the Americas, Caribbean, and EU Europe.

Born in Australia in 1965, Steven danced for Nederlands Dans Teatre II under Jiri Kylian and Rambert Dance Company directed by Richard Alston and Christopher Bruce where he also worked as rehearsal director and from 2000 Associate Artistic Director.

In 2004 Steven joined the British Council as a Drama and Dance Projects Manager with responsibilities for Western Europe, Latin America and Southern Africa. In 2008 Steven was appointed Executive Producer of Pacitti Company and SPILL Festival of Performance, for the 2009 edition. From 2010 – 2015 he ran the Nightingale Theatre in Brighton, a small pub theatre, artist development and residency space. He continues to assist choreographer Christopher Bruce, setting his pieces on companies in Europe and the USA.

Sara is a choreographer, movement director and emerging cultural professional, known for interlacing a variation of dance styles, academic influences and international experiences to develop work that has been described as thought-provoking, dynamic, engaging and emotionally driven. Often highlighting current social and political affairs, her work has been seen at The Place, Sadler’s Wells and Stratford Circus and Centro Cultural UFG (Brazil) to mention a few.

With the purpose to work within Cultural Policy and practice, Sara’s ambition is to provide a more accessible and inclusive art and cultural sector for all.

Clara Giraud (Chair)

Clara is an arts producer, supporting individual artists, organisations and partnerships to enable cultural exchanges and conversations. She is currently working with Mayor of London’s Culture Team on London Borough of Culture. 2014-2019 she was Project Manager at Artsadmin, delivering Unlimited, a commissioning programme for arts by disabled artists, funded in majority by Arts Council England. She has worked closely with performance maker Joseph Mercier, with whom she co-founded company PanicLab, presenting work in the realms of dance, live art and theatre.

Clara engages with work that is political, personal, serious yet with a good dose of humour. She places collaboration, generosity, transparency and change at the heart of everything she does. Clara was chair of the Independent Dance Management Network 2015/16. Currently, she is also on the Advisory Committee of the IETM network.

Janine Harrington

Janine is an artist whose practice includes writing, choreography and public space projects. Her works are mainly for gallery and non-stage spaces prioritising explorations around access, play, agency, confrontation by times/scales and neuroqueer experiences. Janine’s work has been programmed by the following: Wellcome Collection, Fest en Fest, Dance Live Aberdeen, Sånafest Norway, Dance Umbrella, V&A Museums, NottDance, Brighton Festival, Brighton Digital Festival, Tanz in Winterthur, Villa Empain, Warrington Contemporary, Theaterfestival Favoriten Germany, Et20l’été France, EAREYE festival Inkonst, South East Dance.

Janine is a CDS member and supports other artists in production processes including project planning, grant writing and websites.

Alexandrina Hemsley

Alexandrina is a dance artist and writer. Her practice is shaped by and insists on embodied enquiries into a multiplicity of voices expressing felt and embodied politics. She works across the morphing disciplines of live art, dance, dance for camera, theatre, mentoring, creative and critical writing. She is interested in liminal spaces, connectivity, fracturing, displacement and emotionality. She is continually attempting to conjure intersecting, gentle noise amidst oppressive silencing. It is a lifelong project.

Malik Nashad Sharpe

Malik (b. New York) is a choreographer and dancer making performances under their aliases Marikiscrycrycry and DANCEw/YUNGMARIK!! Their work operates with an expansive choreographic proposition that utilises dance and live action as a modality that excavates various ontologies at/around Blackness and [G/END/ER]Queerness. Their performances lean into the affective and physical politics of anxiety, allostatic load, aesthetics, and alienation, creating textured material that undermines hegemonic meaning production.

Gabriela Matic

Gabi is the Programme Director at ATI Boeing Accelerator, a 3-month programme for world-class technology startups building industry 4.0 and sustainability enabling technologies, with the potential to be applied in the UK aerospace industry. Gabi is responsible for designing, recruiting for and running accelerator programmes across the UK mainland. She has founded her own health tech startup before this and uses her experience to help other founders. When she is not working with or thinking about aerospace startups she is a (forever beginner) dance student in the studio and loves what CDS stands for.

Chinami has 10 years’ experience of working in museums and galleries, and currently works as Senior Producer for the Informal Learning programme at the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green, London. Her practice has focused around the collaboration and co-production between contemporary artists and participants, and she has delivered projects including Juke Box meets Tate Britain (2013) with artist Yuri Suzuki, Our Studio (2016), and Festival of Play (2019) with a number of artists including Albert Potrony, Neil Luck and Matt Shaw. Her recent professional interests concern play theory, learning through play and child development, and outside of work, she is currently studying developmental psychology as a part-time evening student.

Francesca Turner

Francesca is a Senior Analyst with Société Générale Group and has worked for a number of years in the financial services industry in the UK and the Americas specialising in customer data management for private banking.

Originally from Hong Kong, she enjoys travelling and experiencing other cultures and different forms of expression. She joined CDS' board in October 2018 to combine her business experience with her enthusiasm for dance and development. Her aim is to streamline the organisation’s day-to-day operations to enable CDS to continue its vital role in the community for many years to come.