New Season of Phoenix Fridays: Featured Artists Announced
6 Sep 2024
We’re thrilled to announce our second round of Phoenix Fridays artists who will be working and developing on their artistic form here at Phoenix HQ, as well as collaborating alongside our company dancers to enhance their visibility as Leeds based freelance dance artists. Since it’s launch earlier on in the year, with the support from Arts Council England, the programme is in response to the challenges freelance artists face, as they endeavor to gain support from and increase production opportunities with arts and funding organisations at large.
Mayowa Ogunnaike
Mayowa is a British-Nigerian contemporary dance artist based in Leeds. Her name means ‘brings joy’ and she aims to encourage that sentiment throughout her practice. In 2017, she graduated from Trinity Laban with a first class honours degree and an award for ‘outstanding achievement in Choreological Studies‘. After graduating, Mayowa joined Phoenix Dance Theatre as an apprentice; performing and touring in the original cast of ‘Windrush: Movement of The People’ choreographed by Sharon Watson.
Following her apprenticeship, Mayowa has worked as a performer for several companies and choreographers and is currently working on new productions with Gary Clarke Company and Lea Tirabasso. Alongside performing, Mayowa delivers creative and technique classes across the UK, using this practice as an opportunity for sharing a wide ranging movement vocabulary, experimenting, collaborating with artists and facilitating cultural exchange.
Dorna Ashory & Teige Bisnought
With influences from Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carl Jung to Spanish artist Salvador Dali, Leeds based collaborative dance artists Dorna Ashory and Teige Bisnought are set to explore different mediums of art including surrealism, dreamscapes, symbolism and the unconscious mind that seeks to create a dystopian landscape and Black Mirror to society.
Dorna Ashory is an Iranian dance artist raised in London and now based in Leeds, she was introduced to contemporary dance at the age of 17 whilst at The Brit School, alongside this, she has worked with Ben Duke in The Place’s youth company, Shift. She later joined London Contemporary Dance School where she performed choreographed works by James Cousins,Rafael Bonachela and Ohad Naharin. She then joined the post-graduate company VERVE, under the artistic direction of Matthew Robinson, working with Jean Cleaville, Maxine Doyle, Noa Zuk and Ben Wright. Dorna joined Phoenix Dance Theatre as a company dancer in January 2023.
Teige Bisnought is a Reading born dance artist who joined Phoenix Dance Theatre in January 2023, his journey into dance started at the age of 12 when he started taking ballet classes with Monica Cleaver and joined street style crew, Urban Stylez. Training in a range of different dance styles including Contemporary, Jazz and modern, Teige later trained at The Ailey School in New York, working with Black Dance Theatre, Encore! He freelanced with multiple choreographers in New York before returning to the UK and joining Phoenix Dance Theatre in January 2023.
Image credits:
Mayowa first image: Arushi Chugh
Mayowa second image: Jemima Yong
Dorna & Teige: Drew Forsyth
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