This week I was resident at Citymoves, Aberdeen. It was a wild and windy week, and I listened to that song by Dougie MacLean (wild and windy night), feeling very Scottish and patriotic. After returning from Bern, Switzerland where the beginning of their Autumn was a very hot Scottish summer. I did my first German speaking play with Pink Mama Theatre, the play was a reimagining of Immanuel Kant by Thomas Bernhard and is called Psittacus Erithacus! It was great to immerse myself fully into a three week intensive period of rehearsals and language, as well as my first experience of actually 'acting', instead of dance/physical theatre. The week in the studio at Citymoves was in complete solitude

At the beginning of this week, I have had the pleasure of sharing the process and improvised performance quality of And with two different youth groups here at the Anatomy Rooms in Aberdeen. I worked with Fusion Youth Dance Group and the Higher Dance pupils from all over Aberdeen. Like most of my And workshops, we start with an improvised warm up, working with ideas and images I bring to the group, recognising how we are feeling that day and working with those sensations and internal thoughts. Together with the group, we then write our very own And list. Based on anything we feel like sharing and dancing to. We begin with 'Can we dance tomorrow please? Can we please move? About......' and th

During the residency week at Dance Base, as I got deeper and deeper into witchcraft, I was joined by David Paul Jones, a musician I worked with on We Are All Just Little Creatures, a collaboration and production between Edinburgh based companies Curious Seed, Lung Ha Theatre Company and Lyra last May. I instantly made a connection with DPJ and loved his way of working, creating and generating songs! I already had a poem called The Devil of Sundays which I thought would be a great addition to the witchcraft section of And, or at least it would help give the section more substance or understanding even if it didn't make the final cut. On a sunny afternoon on the balcony at Dance Base, together

In the Dance Base brochure I wrote: I will also continue to research my interest in improvised performances, using stand up, physical comedy and witchcraft as starting points. I will investigate how voice and sound meet the movement of And. In the residency I was especially taken with a strong focus on the witchcraft section, taking inspiration from the book WITCHES SLUTS FEMINISTS by Kristen J Sollee. I have found this book very relatable and powerful in thinking about female figures, our relationship and history to the patriarchy, body image / awareness / self love and how I can convey/explore/research/invite/enhance/encourage that in a solo/on a stage/in my life/to others, those who have

I have now been creating, researching, developing and trialling different parts of my solo since 2017. During this residency at Dance Base I will continue to be mentored by Christine Devaney from Curious Seed, Chris has been mentoring me for a while (I had one session with her in May, and we spent the whole afternoon but then I could not partake in the residency due to health reasons, so we have it rescheduled now, in Autumn!). I^m looking forward to being in the studio with Chris and discussing more ideas, concepts, possibilities and anything that comes up. The feeling of having a mentor is a new one for me, and Chris likes to think of it as an exchange, not that she tells me what to do, ra