Dr Helen Kindred is a dance artist-scholar, Senior Lecturer in Dance and Professional Practice at Middlesex University and co-Artistic Director of DancingStrong Movement Lab with Adesola Akinleye. Helen has toured internationally as a performer and presented her own choreographic work at venues, festivals and conferences over the past twenty eight years alongside published work in text form more recently within the fields of Dance and Somatic scholarship. Helen believes in dance as a mode of being in the world and fuels this belief through education and performance contexts. Helen completed her PhD at Middlesex University (2021) which developed from her long-standing practice of Bartenieff Fundamentals and examined relationships between somatic practice and improvised performance-making, exploring the between-ness of body-space-environment.
During her time at Middlesex Helen has worked as an Artistic Assessor for the Arts Council England, held the post of Academic Representative for Performing Arts for the Teaching and Learning Strategy Academics at Middlesex and served on the Executive Board of DanceHE. Helen is currently on the Board of Trustees for BEEE Creative.
English, French (basic)
Programme Leader: MA Professional Practice, Dance Technique Pedagogy, Dance (specialisation), Somatic Studies, Artist Practitioner and Creative Industries Professional.
Interim Programme Leader: BA (hons) Professional Practice Arts & Creative Industries (specialisation)
Facilitating dialogue through practice-research, engaging in global practices and discourse in dance.
Mentoring/supervision of MA candidates, all of whom are active practitioners in the field of dance, arts and movement practices.
Module Leader across levels 4-7 : Release-based technique, improvisation, choreography, reflective practice, research design and methodology and practice-research supervision.
Areas of interest include the nuturing of artists through dance education, embodied approaches to curriculum design, teaching and learning, assessment and feedback, critical thinking around and advocacy for dance.
PhD (2021), a practice-as-research doctorate entitled ‘dancing the in-between-ness: (re)articulating Bartenieff Fundamentals through improvised dance performance-making’. This has nurtured, and continues to fuel my teaching practice in somatic approaches to release-based technique, improvisation and choreography while underpinning my choreographic methodologies.
My work offers frameworks for exploring relationships between body-space-environment through movement, sound, text and touch. From an embodied approach to academic research, sharing and community building I have curated (with Dr Akinleye) three somatic-focused symposia at Middlesex University, 2016-2019. These events opened space for international dialogue and sharing somatic perspectives to being in the world, questioning language, hierarchy, spaces and Place in dance as a community.
Kindred, Helen (2021) Moving meditations: embodying Bartenieff Fundamentals through sensorial awareness of breath, bones, and gravity. Dance, Movement & Spiritualities , 8 (1-2). pp. 57-72. ISSN 2051-7068
Kindred, Helen (2019) espacement. [Film/Video]
Dwyer, Benjamin and Kindred, Helen (2019) KnowingUnknowing. [Film/Video]
Akinleye, Adesola and Kindred, Helen (2019) Wright-ing the somatic: narrating the bodily. Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices , 11 (1). pp. 3-6. ISSN 1757-1871
Kindred, Helen (2019) ...whispers. [Film/Video]
'Dancing About...' Elders project in partnership with DancingStrong Movement Lab and Watford Museum (2017)
‘Wright-ing the Somatic: dancing and writing in professional practice’ (2016) ‘Narrating the Somatic: gathering voice, sharing practices’ (2018)
'Queering the Somatic: interrupting the narrative’ (2019)
'KnowingUnknowing' presented at LightMoves Festival and symposium of ScreenDance, Ireland (2017/2018)
'KnowingUnknowing' presented at estancias coreográficas, Oviedo, Spain (2018)
'Concrete-Water-Flesh' R&D funded by Arts Council England (2020-21)
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
Registered Somatic Movement Dance Specialist with the Association for Somatic Movement Dance Therapies (UK and Éire)
Professional Member of OneDanceUK and People Dancing
Formerly Artistic Assessor (dance) Arts Council England, and Executive Board Member for DanceHE. Currently Board Trustee at BEEE Creative.
