Avatâra Ayuso working with Shift Youth Dance Company at The Place

The Choreographer

Avatâra Ayuso is currently a dancer with Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company and has trained extensively in dance and the arts, working as a performer, choreographer, teacher and photographer. 

Avatâra's professional qualifications include a Master of Arts in Professional Dance from Palucca Schule in Dresden Germany, a Certificate in Higher Education from the London Contemporary Dance School and a degree in Linguistics from Universidad Complutense de Madrid in Spain.  

She was a 2006/07 Apprentice on the D.A.N.C.E. (Dance Apprentice Network aCross Europe) program directed by William Forsythe, Wayne McGregor, Frédéric Flamand and Angelin Preljocaj.  During this time she performed One Flat Thing Reproduced by William Forsythe, Fire Sketch by Angelin Preljocaj, [memori] by Wayne McGregor and Success Story by Frédéric Flamand.  Her teaching experience includes educational dance projects with Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company and classes in contemporary, improvisation, Tango and ballet.   

Avatâra was really excited to have been given the opportunity to take part in New Directions and work with The Place, an organisation she is passionate about and is pleased that she has been able to establish herself in the UK.

The Dancers

Shift are the resident Youth Dance Company at The Place, a company of young dancers aged between 13 and 19 years old.  The company meets twice weekly during term time (Mondays and Thursdays from 6pm - 8pm) to take class and create and perform work by a range of choreographers. Auditions are held each year in September and attract young dancers from across London. Shift is led by Rehearsal Directors Hilary Stainsby and Greig Cooke and is managed by Education Officer Lia Prentaki.  Dancers from Shift also train at Centres for Advanced Training and at Circus Space, the Royal Adademy of Dance and other dance schools.  Many have gone on to train full time at the London Contemporary Dance School, Laban and Northern School of Contemporary Dance.


Shift were selected at ROAR! to perform at the Peacock Theatre as part of the Dance Performance strand of the National Youth Dance Festival.

The Rehearsal Process

Over the school holidays, from Monday 14th to Saturday 19th April, Avatâra worked intensively with dancers from Shift over 6 4-hour sessions to create their piece.  As the performance is not until July there will be additional one-hour rehearsals scheduled in during the weeks before the event to polish and prepare.  Although there are approximately 21 dancers in Shift at present, due to the committment required and the intensity of the process a smaller group of 13 (4 boys and 9 girls) including 2 junior associates are taking part in this project . 


During the intital 4-hour sessions the dancers were led through a fun warm-up incorporating improvisation tasks and class with Rehearsal Director Greig Cooke.  Greig also runs the Hurricane Boys Project, now in it's fifth year, as part of the The Place's summer program of activities.  Class was taken at a steady pace so as to not tire the dancers out too early on.  It was also a chance for the group to work on some of the new skills being introduced by Avatâra, such as contact work.

As part of the New Directions scheme Avatâra has benefitted from support and mentoring from Lia Prentaki at the The Place.  This is the first time she has created a piece on a large group of young dancers, having previously choreographed a number of duets and trios on professional dancers and she is excited about the possibilties; formations, patterns, variations of dancers.  She really enjoys working with teenagers and has had oportunities to develop her teaching skills through her outreach work with Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company.


The Piece

The main stimulus for the piece is Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 and the theme of 'freedom of expression'.   Avatâra felt this would be a theme that a group of young dancers could relate to and would be able to give their own interpretations through movement via the creative tasks she set, for example - how would you make someone listen to you without using words?  The dancers were provided with a copy of the Declaration in advance:


Article 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless frontiers.



The dancers said they had enjoyed creating and using so much of their own material to create the piece, a new way of working that they had not experienced before.  Some had expected the style to be very literal in conveying the meaning behind each move, but had since discovered they were able to create very abstract motifs that could be interpreted in many different ways by the audience.  

Rehearsals in progress