Springback Academy 2023

Zsófia Bálint (HU) currently attends a teacher training programme as Hungarian Language and Literature - Drama and Theatre teacher at the University of Szeged Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. She graduated at the University of Szeged with a BA in Hungarian Language and Literature with a specialisation in History of Theatre and Comparative Literature and Culture Studies. She is constantly working on improving her critical publications about performances and literature. Her reviews have been published in Hungarian online journals e.g. f21, art7, Revizor, Tiszatáj Online and Thealter blog websites. In her writing on performances, she aims to write in an engaging and enthusiastic way that draws as many readers as possible into the captivating world of theatre. Her current thesis and hopefully her potential PhD topic explores the analytical aspects of the joint performance of the human body and the puppet in contemporary Hungarian theatre performances. The questions of the differences and potential merging of puppet and human body are also raised in contemporary dance and movement theatre, her research therefore involves both prose and dance theatre performances.

Callysta Croizer is a history student and performing arts writer based in Paris. She holds a degree in History from Université Paris 1 – Panthéon-Sorbonne and is currently a third-year student at the École normale supérieure in Paris, where she is pursuing a Master's in Transnational History. Her research focuses on the founding of Rio de Janeiro’s Municipal Theatre Ballet Company. Callysta writes dance reviews and features for the website Culture Tops and theatre reviews for the national newspaper Les Échos. She also contributes to CND Magazine, the digital quarterly magazine of France's National Centre for Dance.

Dom Czapski is a performer, writer and improviser with a background in theatre and contemporary dance. He trained in drama and dance in Paris then London, graduating from Laban with a Dance Theatre BA(Hons) in 2009. Since then Dom has performed and collaborated with Lost Dog, Ben Wright, Joe Moran, Jonathan Watkins, Improbable, and Dam Van Huynh, among others, and co-founded performing arts collective London Topophobia in 2010. Dom's most recent work, Waiting Music, was performed at Resolution 2022, London. He is also a regular improv performer at comedy club Hoopla / the Miller in London Bridge and likes to write short stories in his spare time.

Rebecca Douglass is occupied with navigating worlds of text, performance and new-media art. She completed her BA at London Contemporary Dance School, during which she experimented with dance writing as co-Editor of/contributor to DIS Feminist Zine. She deepened her studies on the Architetture di Corpi HUMUS Professional Programme, Bologna. She is unpicking how her love for movement supports ventures into versions of herself as writer, reviewer and researcher. Collaboration sits at the core of her creative output and, alongside artist Tasha Hess-Neustadt, she has created several digital-dance works, including 'The Opposite of a Black Hole' which received Arts Council Funding. In 2023 they embark on a month-long residency at Northern Sustainable Futures, Sweden. She is eager to scope out what linguistic adaptations critics might make in talking about virtual bodies of work. She has co-produced several multidisciplinary events including 'VERTICAL TERRAIN', 'erms? extravaganza', and 'COME/CLICK TO SEE'.

Marie Niček graduated from Multimedia Journalism at the University of Westminster in London, also lived in Spain and Brussels. Since returning to the Czech Republic, she has been a freelance journalist in a national newspaper Lidové noviny, and other media. For her big love of dance, she has been also contributing to dance web portals OperaPlus and Dance Actualities. In her free time, she enjoys creative writing, dance and nature.

Jalil Sultani (NL) studies creative writing at ArtEZ, where he stumbled upon a dance performance that stirred him to dance himself. Ever since the stumble he's been split between dedicating himself to writing or dancing. Awkward, as he cannot do a split. He is currently exploring how to create a movement language modelled after Dari (the Afghan dialect of Persian) and researching the interfaces between embodiment in performed literature and dance. He is graduating with a novel-dance film combination. Djalil has delusional plans for the future and no past accomplishments to boast of.

Maria Palma Teixeira was born and raised in Lisbon. She holds a degree in Communication and Culture from the University of Lisbon and an MA in Marketing Communications from Middlesex University London, concluded with distinction. She first explored dance writing in 2011, when she created the dance section for the Portuguese cultural webzine Arte-Factos, to which she contributed until 2016. In November 2014, she contributed as guest writer to the South East Dance blog, Brighton. In November 2017, launched Les Corps Dansants, a Portuguese platform for critical thinking on dance. Among other experiences, she worked at Red Bull Portugal as Digital Coordinator and Communications Specialist (Culture) and she is currently Marketing and Communications Assistant at the National Ballet of Portugal. She published her first poetry book in 2021 and received an honourable mention by the Lisbon Poetry Festival, in 2022. She is a member of the UNESCO International Dance Council.

Elsa Vinet has been practicing classical and contemporary dance since her childhood. During her studies, she developed a passion for dance history and dance theory. Her discovery of Pina Bausch's Orpheus and Eurydice was a real aesthetic shock, and she conducted extensive research on this piece. She worked in the publications department of the Paris Opera Ballet, before moving to Vienna for two years. There she conducted research about the role of women in early modern dance. In Vienna, she also discovered a new and very inventive contemporary scene thanks to ImpulsTanz, TanzQuartier and brut Wien. Elsa is currently based in Paris. She is involved in various cultural projects throughout Europe. In March 2022, she co-founded a non-profit organisation supporting Ukrainian cultural institutions and artists.

Liza Weber is a writer first and foremost, whether that be in the guise of an art critic, art historian, editor or, indeed, dancer. Most recently, she has written for Tanzbüro Berlin, reviewing fortnightly performances for their online portal tanzschreiber. It was during her master’s degree in ‘Critical Writing in Art & Design’ at the Royal College of Art, however, that she became preoccupied with the relationship between writing and dance and founded a society called ‘A_CRitical Dance’. It was also during this time that she frequented The Place, as both a reviewer for ‘Resolution!’ and as an Audience Club Member. Liza also holds a PhD in art history from the Centre for German-Jewish Studies, University of Sussex, where she wrote a thesis on the founding ‘documenta’ exhibition of 1955 and its relationship to the Nazi’s “Degenerate Art” campaign.

Declan Whitaker is a dancer and choreographer based in Basel. As a performer he has worked with Meg Stuart, Frédéric Gies, Isabel Lewis, Simone Aughterlony, and Martin Forsberg. His artistic interest lies with aesthetic conventions and their effects and the border between fantasy and reality. His work has been shown at Tanzhaus Zürich, TanzPlan Ost (Switzerland), Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Den Frie Udstilling (Denmark), The Place (London) and Birmingham International Dance Festival, amongst others. Declan holds a Master's degree from London Contemporary Dance School and has completed further education courses at SKH, Stockholm. Declan is a member of The Field, the associated dance collective at Tanzhaus Zürich, whose work ranges from stage productions, to research and dance within communities. In 2019, he received the danceWEB scholarship at Impulstanz.

Kelly is based in Edinburgh, Scotland and has been writing about dance, and the arts in general, for over 20 years. She has been Dance Editor and Kids Editor for The List Magazine since 1999 and Dance Critic and feature writer for The Scotsman newspaper since 2000. In this capacity she has interviewed choreographers and dancers across the world, and reviewed thousands of shows (including around 100 over three weeks each year at the Edinburgh Festival). Kelly has also written for Dance Europe, The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, The Sunday Herald, The Daily Record, Edinburgh Festivals Magazine, and contributed articles to many theatre and dance programmes, including several for the Dance Consortium and Edinburgh International Festival. She is a regular guest on BBC Radio Scotland’s Janice Forsyth Show, on the review panel. Kelly has also been part of the curation panel for ‘Made in Scotland’, an annual showcase of theatre and dance at the Edinburgh Fringe, and sat on Scottish Government funding panels awarding grants to youth dance projects.

Laura Cappelle is an arts writer and sociologist who lives in France. She has been the Financial Times’ Paris-based dance critic since 2010 and covers French theatre for the New York Times. Additionally, she writes ‘France/Dance’, a monthly column for Dancing Times, and has contributed to the Guardian, Pointe, Dance Magazine and the Globe and Mail, among other publications. She earned a PhD in sociology at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3 in 2018, with a doctoral thesis about the creation process in ballet companies. She is currently an associate researcher with the CERLIS (Centre de recherche sur les liens sociaux). In 2015, she was the dance consultant for the BAFTA-nominated docudrama Rudolf Nureyev – Dance to Freedom, directed by Richard Curson Smith. In 2020, she edited a new French-language introduction to western dance history, Nouvelle Histoire de la danse en Occident (Seuil).

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.