Artist Development Bursary – 5Women

The 5Women Project is a group of mature female performers and dance makers from Spain and UK,  aged between 40-55 years old, who initially came together in Newcastle Upon Tyne between 2005 – 2007 to share their practice, ideas and stories.

Elia Genis (Spain), Vicky Mateu (Spain), Debbi Purtill (UK), Caroline Reece (UK) and Helen Stirland (UK) came together through a collective desire to collaborate with movement and text and to share the artistic responsibilities of producing, choreographing and designing a dance theatre piece for public viewing. The result was 5 Accompanied Solos performed at Dance City in 2007.

12 years life experience later they will revisit this concept and collaborate towards the next performance piece.

This second phase will bring together four of the original dance makers while engaging a fifth female dance artist from the region, who will be in the earlier stages of their career. The work will include an inter-generational community engagement project, using dance as the primary art form as well as incorporating text, film and music to share, gather and bring to life the stories through embodied life experience. Their vision is to create a dance theatre piece that is about real life experiences and  accessible to people aged 16+ to encourage new audiences to the theatre as well as those interested in dance as a life-long art form.

The 5Women Project is committed to building a movement narrative about women across Europe and the love, laughter, hope and challenges they face throughout their lives.