Grace has been developing new ways of working and advocates for practicing care within choreographic working methods. She sees her practice as activism as, through it, she looks to find practical solutions to issues she encounters and support others.
Pastoral Care Offer
The Pastoral Care Offer is an initiative conceived of and developed by Grace Nicol and Temitope Ajose-Cutting as an enhanced offer to support the well-being and needs of dancers both inside and outside of the work. The aim of the initiative is about all stakeholders (producers, curators, choreographers, dancers etc) taking equal and mutual responsibility for each other in negotiating a shared environment.
The Making of Rodin at the Tate Modern
The Making of Rodin at the Tate Modern looks at Rodin’s experimental approach to making and how he challenged norms and structures for his time. To explore this further, and contextualise the work, the Tate interviewed 6 contemporary artists, makers and activists to look at how artists continue to disrupt ways of working today to create an audio guide.
Public Dance Pack
The Public Dance pack was created alongside Grace’s work Slip Mould Slippery and seeks to aid artists and venues by setting up provocations and identifying practical considerations around programming and making dance for galleries, museums and public spaces. It includes Grace and her collaborators’ research as well as practical guidelines for this work and downloadable information sheets which are free to use. The interactive digital pack is available to anyone who wishes to use it through the Dance4’s website as part of Dance4’s Talking Thinking Dancing seminar series.
“It’s filled with so many significant, thought-provoking takeaways regarding bodies, space, the impact of objects being introduced or leaving a space, and the way we care for ourselves and others. We wanted to pass that along as the implications go far beyond dance – there’s definitely something for everyone to reflect upon here!”
Public Dance: Performance for Galleries, Museums and Other Public Spaces (online talk)
The research for this talk included online zoom sessions, hosted by Grace Nicol and Dance4, with gallery programmers across the UK to gain insight into what is needed when programming/making dance in this context. The talk, recorded on the 25th March 2021, disseminates the studio work from Slip Mould Slippery and outcomes from the meetings as well as launching the free, interactive Public Dance pack to further aid artists when working in public spaces.
Understory
Understory is for anyone entering the field of dance, including but not limited to; dance graduates, those who are self-taught and people learning outside of normative structures, at whatever stage in life.
A place for informal honest chat from people who work in dance focusing on the times when they had to navigate the unexpected in their career.
A collective act of solidarity from speakers of different backgrounds and on different paths, intended to offer some hope, inspiration, tools and humour whilst exploding the myth of a straightforward path through a dance career.
Understory is artist-led, independent and run voluntarily.
When abuse of power comes as a surprise (there’s no such thing as a free lunch)
A discursive lunch with choreographers Janine Harrington and Grace Nicol. Bringing people together to explore the current power structures at play in UK dance, we asked; what can we do for ourselves and each other to counter them? The intention of this session was to see where we are at, what other communities are doing and to move a conversation on with this understanding as a foundation . . . over a ‘free’ lunch.
Programming for Lates: Friday Late at the V&A (talk)
This one day workshop looked at the practicalities and challenges of running a late programme as well as developing themes and programmes.