Springback Academy 2017

Nadja Bozovic is a freelance writer from Belgrade, Serbia. After six years as a business journalist, she went on pursuing an MA in Art & Media Theory at the University of Arts in Belgrade. She is now following her dream of becoming a dance writer/researcher focusing on contemporary dance and performance. She is curious about movement research and she loves exploring storytelling through dance. Besides that, she is passionate about women's empowerment, human rights fulfillment, and possibilities of a social change through art.

Cath Carver is an interdisciplinary artist from London. Working with audiovisual fantasy, colour, spatial design, sound and urbanism. Music and dance play a large role in Cath’s life. She DJs as Colour Carver, produces and dances. Playing internationally at clubs, art exhibitions, launch parties, ecstatic dance and appearing on radio. Cath has written for a variety of publications, including The Place's Resolution, Le Cool and Voice. Cath is fascinated by colour, especially that related to urban anthropology and visual culture. She is the founder of Colour Your City – an interdisciplinary creative practice that uses the power of colour to transform urban space. Cath is Editor-in-Chief of COLOURWORXX, their new multimedia magazine, which has a monthly show on Netil Radio. Cath regularly produces chromatic research, spatial design, public art, creative placemaking, colour education workshops, and art x music events.

Anna Dohy has written about dance, theatre, literature and exhibitions since 2014. She has published in every major Hungarian dance journal and magazine, including revizoronline.com, Színház, Táncélet, Prae, and Ellenfény. Anna studied fine art theory and management for three years at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts (MKE). Currently, she is a student at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME) in Budapest. Beside contemporary dance, her interests are in in puppets, robots, classical Indian dance forms, postcolonial issues and gravity. Currently she is working on a study on the theatrical appearance of magical phenomena.

Sebastian Kann is a circus artist, theorist, pedagogue, and performance dramaturg. Together with Natalie Oleinik, he makes circus work under the moniker Manor House. Their newest piece Always/Beautiful explores care as a motor for aerial movement improvisation, beginning creation in 2019. In his theoretical investigations, Sebastian is currently busy with the ‘activity of passivity’, affirmatively staging various ‘passive’ figures – the listener, the host, the devotee, the supporting player – in order to think through the ethics of contemporary performance. Sebastian is a member of the contemporary circus research team at KASK School of Arts Gent (‘The Circus Dialogues’), along with Bauke Lievens and Quintijn Ketels. He also works as a dramaturg for Vera Tussing (Belgium) and Emile Pineault (Québec, Canada). Sebastian lives in Brussels, Belgium.

Anna Kaszuba is a dance artist based between the UK and Ireland. She graduated from London Contemporary Dance School in 2009 and has since worked as a freelance performer. Most notably, Anna has worked with Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre/Teac Damsa (Michael Keegan-Dolan, IE) since 2011, alongside companies such as Still House (Dan Canham, UK), United Fall (Emma Martin, IE) and Scottish Dance Theatre (UK) including many international tours. Anna joined the Springback Academy in 2017 and is keen to explore writing as a new means of expression for her. Photo: Luke Daniells

Daniel Pitt is a curator, producer and occasional dramaturg specialising in contemporary performance. He is currently Executive Producer of Chisenhale Dance (London's home for experimentation in dance and performance) and Artistic Director of In Your Way (a weekend of international outdoor arts interruption in Cambridge). Previously he co-curated 2018’s international Roundhouse CircusFest, was Arts Producer at Cambridge Junction for four years, and previously helped turn Piccadilly Circus into a Circus with Crying Out Loud for the London 2012 Festival. With experience across contemporary circus, dance, theatre and live art, both indoor and out, he's particularly interested in non-traditional and non-narrative forms, and getting more people to take a risk and experience new things. www.danielpitt.live

Annette van Zwoll believes that art makes you understand the world, and your position in it, better. In her role as independent dance dramaturge, programmer and project developer, she commits to projects that offer alternatives to the status quo. She is co-initiator and curator of What You See Festival (NL), which questions unwritten norms around gender and identity, and artistic associate of Bitter Sweet Dance, which stretches conventions about what is ‘normal' through multi-disciplinary dance projects. She is connected to different organisations and choreographers in the Netherlands, Berlin and the rest of Europe.

Yasen Vasilev lives between Brussels and Sofia and works internationally in the field of contemporary dance and performance with dance dramaturgy, critical writing and artistic research. In Belgium he most recently collaborated with choreographer Milo Slayers on his second piece DEMONstratio, on tour in Flanders and Brussels in 2023-2024, and has an ongoing dialogue with choreographer Ehsan Hemat. NUTRICULA/IMPOSSIBLE ACTIONS, a long-term trajectory he initiated in 2015 in Shanghai and in 2019 in Taipei, has been developed and presented internationally in the form of workshops and performances which aim to test and re-imagine the limits of the body, and set up horizontal working models. Yasen is also active on the topic of working conditions in the frame of different initiatives, most recently Kunstenpunt’s A Fair New Idea where he co-authored a Letter for transnational fair practice. In 2023-2024, he will be artistic research fellow at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp and artist in residence at Akademie Schloss Solitude with a project around the distribution of agency within a collective body.

Monna Dithmer is a theatre and dance critic based in Copenhagen, Denmark. From 1989 to 94 she was theatre and dance critic at Dagbladet Information, then moved to Politiken, where she became theatre editor in 1995. She has a particular focus on new trends in performing arts (theatre, performance, dance, new circus). In addition to her reviews and reports she often works as a moderator and guest lecturer.

British born, brought up in London, Oonagh has spent her adult life living in Paris and Brussels where she is still based. She has been a freelance dancer, cultural journalist and producer/programmer since the eighties. As a producer/programmer she has worked with many independent dance companies as well as established institutions such as The Pompidou Centre in Paris, The Place Theatre in London and Les Brigittines in Brussels. She currently manages different arts projects from her own organisation, The Tinderbox, including the precursor of collective dance initiatives, the Bal Moderne. As a journalist, she has contributed to The Guardian, Elle Magazine, The Evening Standard, City Limits and Time Out as well as the Belgian, English language publications Agenda, The Bulletin and Flanders Today. She is also responsible for the Springback Academy yearly programme.

Donald Hutera has been writing and speaking about dance, theatre, live performance and the arts both in the US and the UK since 1977. Publications and websites to which he's contributed include The Times of London, The New York Times, Animated (Foundation for Community Dance, now known as People Dancing), Dance Umbrella, londondance.com and many others. He co-authored The Dance Handbook with former Time Out dance editor Allen Robertson, edited The Rough Guide to Choreography and is featured in Fifty Contemporary Choreographers. An experienced post-show host, Hutera has been a jury member for, among others, the Total Theatre Awards, BE Festival and Casa Festival. In 2013 he began curating, producing, creating and providing dramaturgy for GOlive Dance and Performance Festival and, the following year, co-founded Chelsea Arts Collective aka CAC with visual artist/philosopher Lilia Pegado.

Sanjoy Roy has written on dance for the Guardian since 2002, and contributed to many other publications including the New Statesman, Dance Gazette, Dancing Times, and he is London correspondent for Dance International magazine. He was formerly production editor and book designer for Dance Books Ltd. He wrote the Guardian's popular Step by step guides to dance, and conceived and scripted the much-loved animation series Planet Dance: a visitor's guide to contemporary dance. He has been a writing mentor at Springback Academy since 2014. He keeps an archive of his writing at sanjoyroy.net.

Roslyn Sulcas is a South-African born dance critic and culture writer for the New York Times. While living in Paris she began writing for the British Dance Theatre Journal, and became Paris correspondent for Dance & Dancers, Dance Magazine and Dance International as well as writing frequently for other publications. In 1996, she moved to New York and worked as an editor at Saveur, Top Model, House & Garden and House Beautiful while continuing to write about dance. She began reviewing dance for The New York Times in 2005. In 2011, she moved to London, where she continues to write about dance, film, theatre and culture for the New York Times.