Working on – current projects

StreamDANCE (Tandem Works)

StreamDANCE is the first national project to commission made for broadcast digital dance pieces for young audiences. Three commissions of £15,000 will be awarded to create new digital dance works, due to premiere in early 2022.  

The project is a rapid response directly addressing the lack of digital dance cultural offerings for the youngest in society.  

For more information, see this page.


Cupid’s Revenge National Tour (New Art Club)

In today’s disposable world where love is used to sell us everything from plug-in cars to yoghurt… where did real love go?          

The latest dance theatre comedy show by ground breaking performance company, New Art Club, is a joyful, physical and verbal outburst against the forces that masquerade as love. With New Art Club’s dexterous physicality this impossibly big topic is broken open and brought vividly to life.    

Click here for the Cupid’s Revenge trailer


Getting Dressed Films  (Second Hand Dance)

Commissioned by StreamDANCE Second Hand Dance is creating 5 short (2-3mins each), bold and colourful screen dance films. Audiences will travel through a wardrobe into a digital world of swirling skirts, sashaying socks, and glitter ball dresses. The films will subtly challenge the peer pressures and popular culture influences children often encounter in relation to what they wear and how they wear it.  Made for ages 3-8.  

The Getting Dressed films each explore a different item of clothing in a vibrant, simple aesthetic that frames the textural nature of clothes and fabric, with a bit of sparkle. The films will use the possibilities of green screen to create multiples of dancers, kaleidoscopes, layering and effects to create a playful aesthetic of 80’s pop art smashed with millennial pastels. Premiering Early 2022.


Touch national and international touring  (Second Hand Dance)

Touch connects, contains and stimulates. Touch is how we build relationships. 

‘Touch’ is an improvised and interactive dance-show performed by four dancers and a DJ. Adults and children are offered the chance to watch, play and dance as the performers move delightfully and deftly to a live mixed music score. 

A beautifully crafted, gentle and playful experience for adults and children that reaffirms the power of touch and dance in a digital age. Touring Spring 2022, available for international touring from June 2022. Second Hand Dance, supported by the British Council and Canadian High Commission New Conversations: Canada programme, is currently exploring sustainable and digital approaches to touring using Touch as a cast study. 

Click here for the Touch trailer


Grass films double bill  (Second Hand Dance)

For ages 4 – 7 

Explore the world beneath your feet.  

Look down. What are you standing on?  

Explore the ground and all its wriggling inhabitants in this double bill of quirky dance films. 

Shot in the great outdoors, both films celebrate the magic of the natural world – rolling in long grass, finding spiders in the park and the warm feeling of the sun on your face. Sunny Days and Insect Hands will inspire you to look a little more closely at the world around you, get moving, get outside and play. 

Flitting butterflies, slithering snails and leaping grasshoppers take centre stage alongside the fabulously talented performer Takeshi Matsumoto in this stunning short dance film produced by Second Hand Dance.  – Disability Arts Online 

Click here for the Grass trailer


Night Tree (Second Hand Dance)

For Ages: 3-7  

Every year, in the middle of winter, we go into the forest to find our tree. Our special tree. We bundle up so we’re warm, with hats, gloves, shoes and coats. We travel through the trees. Among the leaves and muddy puddles. Listening to the birds sing. And watching for animals. 

Come into the woods and dance as we go on a gentle, sensory journey through the beautiful wintery forest to find a very special tree… Squidge through mud, sip hot chocolate, and play amongst the pines! Night Tree is a magical two-part film based on Eve Bunting’s book of the same name. The films can be accompanied by downloadable print-at-home interactive sensory activities for all the family to enjoy together. 

There is a sense of magic in the air across these short films as they meet first a curious, graceful deer, then a haughty, imperious owl. The wonders of the forest through sound and movement are shown in a delightful way. – Lou Reviews 

Click here for the Night Tree trailer


FORGE (Rachel Mars)

In 2014 the 100kg iron ‘welcome’ gate was stolen from Dachau concentration camp. A local blacksmith made a replica. It was exactly like the original. 

FORGE is the first of a new set of work about memorials, replicas, and human behaviour at spaces with difficult histories. It will ask what and who memorials are for, what should happen to places where traumatic events have taken place and who decides. It will ask about decay, hallowing, closure and our responsibility to the present. 

Rachel is working with female welders and metal workers, trauma tourism academics, memorial architects and custodians of memory. R&D supported using public funding from the National Lottery through  Arts Council England, Open Lab Barbican, Cambridge Junction, Metal Culture- Peterborough, MGC Futures, with additional time at Royal Exchange, Manchester. 


Doodle Chalk Dance film  (Anatomical)

The Doodle Dance Show fuses drawing, dancing and storytelling in an interactive, family, artistic experience. 

Commissioned by StreamDANCE, the Doodle Chalk Dance film moves the action into the playground with a cast of children.  Using chalk, with the playground as a canvas, the cast lead us through a series of impossible adventures. With the perspective switched from the horizontal to the vertical plane, wild leaps of imaginative storytelling are possible. Drawing on elements from the original show, the children can ‘stand’ on each other’s shoulders to reach a hot air balloon, balance on the tip of an elephant’s trunk and dance a jig on a pirate ship.  

The visual style, influenced by American pavement drawing culture, is colourful, fun and DIY.  The film will be 7-10 minutes. Aimed at 3-8 year olds and their families.  


Snowy Showy (Anatomical)

A seasonal celebration of togetherness using the rich magic of collective imagination. Co-commissioned by The Place and Theatr Clwyd, Snowy Showy will premiere at The Place, London in December 2021.  

The third in a trilogy of distinctive, interactive dance performances for family audiences, Snowy Showy sees the return of central characters Lars and Ingvild. Set in a magical hotel high in the snowy mountains audiences embark on a series of adventures including being caught inside a giant laundry (imaginary) bubble, exploring a spooky ‘unopened’ room, & partying hard in a magnificent ballroom. The show promotes togetherness through dance & creativity. It gets families moving & laughing. And of course, there will be snow. Lots of it. 


Elevate (Second Hand Dance)

Elevate is a strategic funding programme developed by Arts Council England to strengthen the resilience of diverse arts organisations, museums and libraries not in receipt of National Portfolio funding.   

Second Hand Dance is a proud recipient of this award which is providing a sustained infrastructure for the disabled led organisation.