MEET THE ARTISTS

Womxn SRSLY are proud to have worked with an amazing group of artists! We are very grateful to all the artists who have performed at the Womxn SRSLY platform read all about them below.

The Yonis

The Yonis are a contemporary movement girl band. Inspired by gig culture, we want to recreate the shared feelings of joy, euphoria and togetherness that one feels when watching their favourite band. Our work brings contemporary dance to unexpected places and in doing so encourages audiences to break the audience/performer barriers, to dance with us, enabling a more embodied viewing experience. As an all-female collective we celebrate our bodies as vehicles to be physical, powerful and dynamic, finding strength in coming together to create, take up space and make noise. The Yonis are proud to be girl-band in residence at Womxn SRSLY.

Alissa Anne Jeun Yi

Alissa Anne Jeun Yi is a writer, performer, comedian, rapper and strong independent mixed-race British East Asian...amongst many other things. Her Edinburgh Fringe 2018 debut Love Songs (developed through the Soho Theatre) received Guardian Pick of the Fringe, was nominated for two Edinburgh comedy awards, and longlisted for the Tony Craze Award. An alternative, empowering and ultimately positive narrative about sexual assault, Alissa has gone on to actively speak out about healing and navigating trauma and support charities within this field of women's rights. You can catch her talking more about it on BBC Sounds podcast After.

More recently Alissa has received commissions from the Bush Theatre and the V&A, and as well as adapting Love Songs for screen is now working on her second performance art, cabaret and stand up show: BANANA.

Alethia Antonia

Originally from Derbyshire, Alethia began dancing at 14, taking street dance lessons at her local dance school. At 17, she joined Retina Youth Dance Company and Derbyshire Youth Dance Company, and then went on to train at NSCD on the Foundation Course, graduating with the Performance Award. Alethia continued her training at London Contemporary Dance School, where she was a Peggy Hawkins Scholarship recipient. In 2017, she graduated with a First Class Degree and the Principal's Award. Alethia has worked with artists such as Mickael Marso Riviere, Grace Nicol, Filip Van Huffel, Victor Quijada, Renaud Wiser, Gracefool Collective, Mbulelo Ndabeni, and has performed work by Hofesh Shecter. She has also performed in Resolution and at the V&A.

Alethia’s other artistic interests include choreography, singing, sketching and writing. Her choreographic work has been shown on various occasions at the Robin Howard Theatre, and in 2017 her installation "Pull" was shortlisted for the David Steele Choreography Prize.

Andrea Spisto

Andrea Spisto is a clowning artist. Her critically exclaimed most recent show, Butch Princesa, involved character comedy, dance and Latin beats guide you deep into a surreal queer immigrant wonderland. Unflinchingly emotional art explosion. Honest to the teeth and under the skin fun. Brave, joyful, fiery! A show full of insights into gender boundaries, politics and human magic. 'Spisto provides a valuable reminder of the power of creativity when liberation is the goal' **** (List). 'Unpacking what it means to be beautiful and a woman in the 21st century... the clowning, dancing and singing are all superb' **** (ToDoList.org.uk). 'A joyous trip' (FunnyWomen.com).

Alice White

Alice White is a London based dance and arts lover. Having graduated from Trinity Laban in 2015, Alice currently works in arts Press and Communications as well as creating and performing work. Alice’s choreographic and film based work has been shown at Old Market Theatre, Victoria & Albert Museum, Trinity Laban, Swallowsfeet Festival, Brighton Fringe, Resolution at The Place and other venues across the UK.

Bang and Bollocks

BANG & BOLLOCKS are a surreal duo who have harnessed their procrastination to explore new levels of absurdity, straddling the space between fact and fiction. The friction where expectations meet the everyday. Their work blends genres, building visual stimuli to toy with overstimulation. Collages on paper, moving image, interactive soundscapes and physical body performance.

Becky O’Brien

Originally from Ireland, Becky is a London based choreographer and dance artist. Her work varies from body based performance art to choreographed dance work. She explores themes of gender, identity and sexuality, with a queer/feminist approach. She uses her body as a political force to question the construction of her own identity and where her female body lies in relation to art and to society.

Becky Namgauds

Becky is a London based dancer and choreographer. Companies she has worked for include National Theatre & Marianne Elliot, Eddie Peake at the Barbican, Company Decalage, Marion Motin (FR), Holly Blakey, Ragner Kjartansson, Brigel Gjoka and she is featured in videos and commercials for Dior, Klyne, Dua Lipa, iD and Chanel, River Island, and Take That. She was selected by Hofesh Shechter in 2016 to create a piece for East Wall Warm Up produced by East London Dance and Hofesh Shechter Company and has performed her works Exhibit F, Severed Dreams and RodaDoras at venues around the UK. 

Claudia Palazzo

Claudia Palazzo is an artist and dancer working across the intersections and contradictions of dance, performance art, alternative cabaret, and film using her body as a responsive site to her environment and territory. Her work exists somewhere between the nightclub, gallery, and street and focuses on the live experience as a place for highly charged connections.

Claudia is often preoccupied with, how to move through, deal with, process and oppose systems of violence.

As a dancer and performer Claudia has presented her work internationally in a wide variety of contexts and has spent a long time on the club scene.

She has worked with Eddie Peake, Franko B, Complicite, Ann-Liv Young, Jamila Johnson-Small/Last Yearz Interesting Negro, Carlos Motta, Cyberdog, Clod Ensemble, Sinead O’Connor, Lucy McCormick, Marisa Carnesky, Michael Dean and many others. She is a member of queer performance and activism collective SPIT, Artist and Dancer in residence at GROW Tottenham, and a panel member and stage manager at Womxn SRSLY.

Elinor Rowlands

Elinor Rowlands uses experimental film, poetic voice and gathered sound as vessels to defy systemic barriers that prevent disabled artists from showing art. She is provocative in the way she uses these vehicles in a visceral and immersive way to tell stories from marginalised voices. Her neuro diverse experience shines boldly in the way she edits sound and images and combines them with her own voice. Her work has been described as evocative, beautiful and moving, often showing life from the disenfranchised in a way that is elegant and not in a way that repels audiences from the subject but draws them in to empathise because for so many who have grown up with ableist attitudes ingrained in society, it is difficult for them to see barriers that exist to weaken the outsider voices. For equality and diversity to occur, barriers need to be knocked down, attitudes need to change and fear needs to be challenged, because it is from empathy that connection and vitality can truly happen.

Emily Warner

Emily Warner is an artist, performance maker, and facilitator. Prioritising process and collaboration she devises performative work that examines the interplay between body, movement and language. Tackling abundance and multiplicity with playful misrecognition, her work explores the reductive systems that shape how we function, pointing attention toward narratives that emerge from the margins. Working between Birmingham and London, online and offline, Emily has received commissions from Eastside Projects, Ikon Gallery, Fierce Festival and the University of Birmingham.

Fågelle

With an elaborate array of pedals, synthesizers and samplers, Fågelle dives into the sounds and textures, experimenting and tinkering until she find what will come together with poetry to create a compelling song. She's a producer and a performer who sees herself in the middle ground between sound art and pop, which leads to wonderful creative latitude while also generating the conundrum of not fitting in with one particular scene. With lyrics in Swedish about our times in micro and macro-perspective she writes about how time is painful and always slipping away and about power and powerlessness. Her music has been described as “a soft punch in the face”.

Fauzia

Womxn SRSLY DJ

Geni Lou

Geni Lou specializes in Popping and Waacking and has been working professionally since 2009. In addition to participating to various dance events as a guest performer and dancer, her devotion to the dance has led her to be recognised and respected amongst peers nationally and internationally.

Haley McGee

Haley McGee is a solo performer, theatre-maker, actor, writer and voiceover artist, originally from Canada, now based in London, UK. She’s been described as “defiantly distinctive” (The Scotsman), “a fearless, raw talent” (CBC Radio), and “one to watch” (A Younger Theatre). She creates solo shows, live performances and plays for people who want to see innovative theatre that makes them feel everything. Combining her diverse experience as a classical actor, improviser, storyteller and clown, she talks directly to audiences and celebrate the live-ness of theatre. She’s into liberating the female voice on taboo subjects and digging into uncomfortable questions with humour and guts.

Hannah Ballou

Hannah is a comedian, performance artist, writer, and lecturer in Drama and Theatre Arts at Kingston University, London.  Recent work includes hoo:ha, goo:ga, and The Doctor Is In.  She has written for McSweeney's and Comedy Studies.  She is also senior personal assistant to Marina Abramopug.

Hava Carvajal

Hava Carvajal has been spending most of her time trying to look after herself, hanging out with loved ones, and working at a community centre. Around once every three months she makes little things that are about feelings, desires, dysphoria, life and stuff she finds hard to articulate in therapy.

Holly Beasley-Garrigan

Holly is a Choreographer, Theatre-Maker, Performer and Movement Director with a background spanning Theatre, Dance, Music and Live Art.

Concerned with re-evaluating the spaces we inhabit - as a gay, working class, female artist - she likes making anarchic work for unusual spaces and audiences; specialising in devised, site-specific, immersive and inter-disciplinary performance. Previous acclaim includes a Scotsman Fringe First Award & MTN Innovation Award for Fine Chisel’s Dumbstruck (2013); ThreeWeeks Editors' Award for Fine Chisel’s Edinburgh Season (2012); Best Collective Award for The Flanagan Collective’s Adelaide Season (2016); Vault Festival Outstanding Contribution Award for The Guild of Misrule’s The Great Gatsby (2017).

Holly is currently redeveloping her solo show OPAL FRUITS; about working class women and the trouble with 90’s nostalgia. She recently developed I, OBJECT; a site-specific video installation created with residents on the Knowle West council estate in Bristol. She co-created, choreographed and performed as Jordan Baker in The Guild of Misrule's Immersive Great Gatsby (2015), the longest-running immersive show in the UK, recently transferring to London’s West End and internationally to Brussels and South Korea.

Isis O’Regan

Womxn SRSLY DJ

Isobel Croot

Womxn SRSLY DJ

Joana Nastari

She is part of a small group of Queer Artists and Activists, Sex Workers and Allies who believe in the power of disrupting and reclaiming stories, and rewriting history through the power of collaboration. Their mission is to end Sex Worker stigma and make allies of everyone, and they believe that bringing people together is one of the best possible ways to campaign for change. Her show Fuck You Pay Me raises awareness of sex workers rights in the mainstream media. (You can next see the show at The Arcola London in July ‘19). They also run the big Queer Brazilian community party “Brazilian Wax” - a night of Latin music, mystical mayhem and striptease! They work to support and platform the work and stories of an amazing, growing community of Queer and Sex Worker artists through organising conversations, discussions, workshops and contributing to direct actions.

Kabecca Films

Kabecca Films was founded by Katie and Rebecca Dale-Everett as a platform for collaboration, fusing Katie’s background in cross-genre choreography and Rebecca’s experience of producing award-winning short films. The female-led team specialise in bold and thought-provoking dance-on-screen reaching audiences nationally and abroad. The result of their first collaboration, ‘Digital Tattoo: Artefact 1’, inspired by the ‘Right to be Forgotten’ law was acquired by Channel Four for their online random Acts strand.

Katie O’Brien

Katie did a Fine Art degree which was so useful she was able self fund guerilla performances on the streets of London using earthy materials such as cardboard and chalk. In 2008 she set up the feminist performance group, The Muffia and discovered she was quite funny. In 2010 Katie ventured into writing and performing comedy and eventually trained at Philippe Gaulier's Paris-based Clown & Theatre school (2012 - 2013) only to discover she was, "not funny at all! And had never been funny in her entire life!" In 2014 & 2016 her character comedy shows received 5 star reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe. In 2016 Katie was invited to be in an exhibition called 'Woman' where she created a multi-media installation about her body and the sexualisation of children, that was actually not funny. Also in 2016 Katie won Best Supporting Actress at the British Independent Film Festival leading to a roaring acting career in immersive shows for Secret Cinema, Crystal Maze, Mandinga Arts and "other" productions. In 2017 Katie became interested again in making socially engaged theatre and is currently developing an autobiographical show. After her first storytelling gig in January 2019 Katie was published on Medium’s blog site and now has the bug to write more short stories. Katie has been on the same bill as Russell Brand at the Palace theatre, just saying. 

Liadain Evans

Lindy Nsingo

Nsingo was born in Zambia, raised in Belgium and educated in South Africa before moving to the United Kingdom to complete her Bachelor of Arts at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Leeds and Masters of Arts, with a specialisation in choreography, at the London Contemporary Dance School in 2012. Drawing upon her personal migratory experience, dancer and choreographer Lindy Nsingo has established a unique movement aesthetic that speaks to the essential human desire to belong in a constantly spinning world. Extensively trained in both Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham techniques, as well as possessing a background in traditional ballet, hip-hop and theatre, Nsingo is particularly influenced by the center of the body and the importance of being grounded through movement.

Lucy McCormick

Lucy McCormick makes nightclub installations, cabaret interventions and extravaganza theatre shows, marrying interests in absurdity, ineptitude, feminism and the grotesque.

Her debut solo show Triple Threat stormed the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2016, followed by two 3 week runs at Soho Theatre in 2016/17. It was awarded the Take Me Somewhere Brick Award, the Best Performer award at Dublin Fringe, TV Bomb Groundbreaker Award and nominated for a Total Theatre Award & Off West End Award. The show was one of the Guardian’s top 10 comedy shows of 2016 & 17, was part of the Inbetween Time International Showcase 2017 (Bristol), PUSH International Showcase (Vancouver) and continues to tour the UK, Europe, the US and Canada. Lucy is a Research Fellow at Queen Mary University and Associate Artist at Hackney Showrooms & Soho Theatre. 

'Lucy McCormick has the moves of Beyonce, the lungs of Christina Aguilera and the morals of a punk iconoclast' The Scotsman

Magda Tuka

Magda Tuka is a performance artist. Her work has been supported through a succession of grants, scholarships, residencies, co-productions and festival selections, presented in theatres, gallerys, a cinema, a church, and online; in Poland, UK, Netherlands, Denmark, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, USA and Germany.

Manami

Womxn SRSLY Dj

Niya B

Niya B is a transfeminist artist, working at the intersections of visual art, video and performance, specifically exploring themes of ecology and (trans)gender politics. Her work explores corporeality as the ground where culture, ideology, gender, sexuality, social ethics, systemic issues and collective aspirations are negotiated.

Niya is also the founder and curator of Translucent: a performance platform for trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming artists.

Selected exhibitions and festivals: International Print Biennale Newcastle; 5th Moscow Biennale; 5th Thessaloniki Biennale; And What?, Fringe!, Eco-futures and Womxn SRSLY; Royal College of Art (London); Emergency 2018 (Z-arts Manchester); Unfix (CCA Glasgow); NEoN festival (Dundee). Shortlisted for: Adrian Howells Award 2019; Aesthetica Art Prize 2018.

Niya has shown work as part of conferences at: Goldsmiths University of London – Department of Sociology; Abertay University (Dundee): University of Leeds - School of Sociology and Social Policy.

Rachel Ní Bhraonáin

Rachel is a performer and choreographer based in Ireland. She works with dance, aerial and writing, with a passion for dance on screen. Her multidisciplinary show Losing Your Body won the WildCard award at Dublin Fringe 2019 and was nominated for Best Production, Best Performer and the Judges Choice Award. She first trained at London Studio Centre and went on to train in aerial, with a particular love of Vertical Dance.

Rebekah Ubuntu

Rebekah Ubuntu is a multidisciplinary sound artist whose creative and scholarly practices explore futurity, rebellion, gender, transfeminism and queerness through performance, live art, voice, installation, text and video. A recent graduate of the prestigious British Institute of Modern Music, their works have featured at BBC Radio 1, Wellcome Collection, Tate Modern, Tate Britain, London’s Serpentine Galleries, the Barbican Centre, and European arts institutions.
Find Rebekah on instagram: @rebekah.ubuntu

Rukeya Monsur

Rukeya Monsur (she/her) is a working class Bangladeshi trans muslim artist based in London, working in Dance performance. Her most recent work Brown Handbag unpicks trans embodiment & is a meditation & self-defence ritual against street violence. Previous work Nothing 2 Nobody explores mental illness & the familial in relation to queer islamic life. Her work has been presented at the Stedelijk Museum, Odbhut Queer Bangla Group, Steakhouse Live, Chisenhale Dance Space, Goldsmiths University, Lofft Das Theatre Leipzig, Yorkshire Dance, Passenger Films, LADA. Past work has been shown at Maltings Theatre, Exeter Phoenix, Gulbenkian and Queen Halls Art Centre. Her work has been supported by A.C.E, Dance4, Dance City, Queen Mary University, Kala Sangam Arts Centre, Theatre in the Mill, Lake Studios Berlin & Greenwich Dance amongst many others.

Scarlett Lassoff 

Scarlett Lassoff is a performance artist who doesn’t fit in performance art and a cabaret artist who doesn’t fit in cabaret, and she recently returned to London after spending 6 months in Los Angeles crash landing into the alt-drag, queer performance and vaudeville scenes there. She presents performative snapshots of dreamlike, bizarre and utopic fantasies through a neurodiverse and DIY lens, often using humour, satire and audience interaction.

Sophia Ahmed ‘Sofa Sofa’

Steph Be

Symoné

Symoné is cabaret and circus artist, most renowned for fusing multiple hula hoops with rollarskates and bringing a club-like energy in her performances. She has worked in over nine different countries, from Jamaica with pop star Omi - you know that catchy song Cheerleader - to London's West End. 

Treacle Holasz

Treacle Holasz is a theatre and live arts producer, working across; dance, circus and music and with organisations such as The Place, Middlesex University and the Royal Opera House. Treacle also makes work as an artist, preoccupied with the ideas of ‘Sexuality and Power’ her work is rooted in dance and theatre, playing with dark humour, sensual movement and vibrant hyper visuals. When Treacle isn’t changing the world with art or ‘making things happen’, she’s creative director and dancer at The Meyer Dancers London’s 1960s Go Go & 1970s Disco Dance-Sisterhood.

Valerie Ebuwa

Valerie Ebuwa is a freelance dance artist, writer and model based in London. She started her training at Lewisham College before obtaining a BA HONS degree from London Contemporary Dance School. Amongst others she’s recently worked with; Vincent Dance Theatre, Clod Ensemble, Holly Blakey, Eddie Peake, Tom Dale and Rhiannon Faith. As well as her blog, Valerie writes for I am Hip Hop magazine; a printed and online publication championing Hip Hop culture.

Victoria Rucinska

Vicki graduated from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance with a First Class Honours Degree in 2015.  Since graduating, she has further developed her interests in Pilates and Reiki and is currently studying towards obtaining qualifications in both fields.  Vicki continues to work in dance both as a choreographer and performer, progressing as an artist who cultivates her crafts holistically.

Virginia Kennard

Virginia Kennard is a live artist and movement practitioner from Aotearoa New Zealand. She recently completed her MA Performance at Leeds Beckett University, and creates explicit body performances and sonic mash-ups that unpack, queer, and revamp unclean femininity, moral panic and sacred spaces.

Yael Claire Shahmoon

Yael Claire Shahmoon is a Multi media artist: singer, composer and performer. also known in her performance name SPIRITWO. She expresses diverse vocal sounds blending musical styles. Her sets include Singing, Vocal effects, Modern Choir works, props and projections. She is a SOAS University student  winning a Mildred Loss Scholarship for Middle Eastern liturgical singing in Jerusalem (2015). She performed a Solo set at SPILL Live Art Festival, Roundhouse Accidental Performance Festival and Richmix Arts Centre. She was also headlining Hackney Wicked Art Festival, Supporting Electro Punk Legend Martin Rev (SUICIDE) and Punch Drunk ‘Afters’ at theBattersea Arts Centre.