EMOTION has happened! Find out about the performance here.
A community performance project in Elephant and Castle for all ages and experience.
Do you love to dance and move?
Do you want to meet new people?
Do you want to take part in an extraordinary performance?
Join us for EMOTION, a series of 8 free workshops between 26 June – 12 July 2025, leading up to a performance on Sunday 13 July, that will take place at dawn.
EMOTION is the fourth in our rotating series of performance projects – LANGUAGE, POWER, FEAR, EMOTION – made in Elephant and Castle. Check out what we got up to in previous projects here.
See what happened last year
TAKING PART
It’s FREE to take part and no experience is necessary, but enthusiasm is essential!
Everyone is invited to join us. We will reserve half of the places for people local to Elephant and Castle who live, work, study or have ties here.
All ages are welcome! Participants under 12 must be with a guardian over 18 who is also participating. Participants between 12 and 18 attending alone will need to provide a guardian’s consent ahead of the sessions. Our lead facilitators have been DBS checked.
Languages: Group A (morning) sessions will be delivered in both English and Spanish.
Travel: We have a limited number of bursaries available to attend the workshops, these can cover return bus fares to get to/from the workshops. Given the unusual start time (dawn – 4am!) of the show, we will arrange travel on the day of the performance to support involvement – this will be discussed in the workshops. Where taxis are required, this will be limited to those within London.
ABOUT THE WORKSHOPS
The theme is EMOTION. We will be exploring thresholds and cycles of birth, life and death. Working with movement and voice, we will challenge ourselves to express the inexpressible and explore the edges of experiences that change us forever. EMOTION will bring performers and audience together at the tender and very special time of dawn, starting in semi-darkness, ending with sunrise and a new day.
Annie Pui Ling Lok and Juan Ayala will lead the workshops supported by guest artists Moyra Cecilia Silva Rodriguez, Sasha Mahfouz Shadid and Andreas Levisianos. These artists bring influences from krumping, hip hop, martial arts, theatre, voice work/singing, contact improvisation and contemporary dance.
Each participant is invited to take part in eight workshops between Thursday 26 June – Saturday 12 July, leading up to an hour long performance at 4am on Sunday 13 July 2025.
Regular workshops will take place on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. There are three groups to choose from: Group A (morning), Group B (afternoon) or Group C (evening). Joint workshops on Saturday 28 June, Saturday 5 July and Saturday 12 July will bring all three groups together.
We encourage you to join as many of the workshops of your chosen group as you can and if there are ones you cannot attend please let us know in advance.
Group A (morning) sessions will be delivered in both English and Spanish.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Annie Pui Ling Lok has been a freelance dance artist since 1999 and Co-Artistic Director and Joint CEO of Siobhan Davies Studios (SDS) since 2021. Outside of SDS Annie continues to teach, choreograph, perform, and parent.
Juan Ayala is a director, dramaturg, performer and designer of over 50 works. Specializing in both devised theatre and adaptations his work combines narrative with abstraction to create poetic, comic and politically charged work.
Moyra Cecilia Silva Rodriguez is a Peruvian performance maker and movement thinker. Her practice is rooted in collaborative, interdisciplinary processes that build bridges between individual experiences and collective narratives.
Sasha Mahfouz Shadid is a British/Palestinian movement artist, painter and culture worker. His passions are Street-dance (Hip Hop, Krump, House) and traditional Palestinian dance; forms that he has learnt from renowned artists/dancers from around the world.
Andreas Levisianos is a composer and performer from Greece with a background in classical music and a focus on contemporary practice. His work explores the interrelation of analysis, synthesis, and performance.
ACCESS AND AMENITIES AT SDS
Siobhan Davies Studios is mostly accessible, with lifts to all floors. There are two accessible parking spaces available on site which can be booked in advance. Blue Badge parking is also available nearby on West Square and Garden Row (for a full map visit the Southwark Council website). Our main door is power assisted.
Amenities include:
- Changing facilities*
- Communal showers*
- Toilets / wheelchair accessible toilets
- Kitchen: tea and coffee making, fridge, and microwave
- Snack Bar: We have a small selection of bars, drinks and food available to buy from the front desk.
- Shops: The closest shop is Superway Supermarket on Garden Row (4 min walk), the closest supermarket is Sainsbury’s on New Kent Road (7 min walk). We also recommend the Art Cafe which serves sandwiches, jacket potatoes and meals (3 min walk).
* Our changing facilities and showers are not fully accessible. Our closest publicly available and fully accessible changing facility is at The Castle Centre, a leisure centre 0.3 miles away from the studios. You can find full details of their features here.
Sign ups for EMOTION have now closed.