THE CREATIVE INTENSIVE — Movement, Light & Sound

with Dr Russell Maliphant OBE & Dana Fouras

Five-Day Choreographic Intensive | Limited to 15 Places

📅 7–11 September 2026 | 📍 Studio 17, Excelsior Studios, 17–21 Sunbeam Road, London NW10 6JP | 🎟️ Full price: £580 + VAT

About the Programme

Russell Maliphant Dance Company is proud to announce the first edition of The Creative Intensive — a landmark five-day programme led by internationally acclaimed choreographer, Olivier Award winner and OBE Dr Russell Maliphant, with composer and creative collaborator Dana Fouras.

For the first time, RMDC opens the doors to its unique creative methodology: a practice shaped over 30 years of interdisciplinary work, exploring movement, light and sound not as separate elements to be assembled, but as a unified atmospheric and dramaturgical language.

Participants work directly with Russell and Dana, exploring how atmospheric composition and sonic intent can shift the emotional and choreographic meaning of movement — working alongside a lighting technician to integrate theatre light as a creative tool from the very first moment of creation.

Programme Highlights

  • Direct mentorship from Dr Russell Maliphant OBE - Olivier Award winner, Associate Artist at Sadler's Wells, PhD researcher in anatomy and somatic practice

  • Working sessions with Dana Fouras - composer, performer and long-term RMDC creative collaborator

  • Masterclasses on how light, sound and movement operate as a single integrated creative language

  • Studio-based creation sessions applying the knowledge gained

  • Small cohort - maximum 15 participants - ensuring individual attention and genuine depth

Who Should Apply

  • Professional and emerging choreographers

  • Independent dance artists developing new performance work

  • Theatre and performance directors with an interest in movement-led practice

  • Lighting designers and sound artists wishing to understand the choreographer's perspective

  • Final-year and postgraduate students from dance and performing arts conservatoires

  • Arts practitioners working in somatic, interdisciplinary or site-specific contexts

No prior experience of working with light or sound is required. Participants are encouraged to arrive with a nascent idea for choreography or performance work to develop during the week.

Pricing & Subsidised Places

Full Rate - £580 + VAT

A small number of subsidised places are available, supported by Russell Maliphant Dance Company, for artists for whom the full cost would be a barrier to attending.

  • 5 subsidised places available across the cohort of 15

  • To apply, please use this form

  • Applications for subsidised places close 31 July 2026

  • Subsidised participants take part identically to all other attendees - there is no distinction once the programme begins

Questions & Press Enquiries

If you have any questions or press & interview requests please contact:

Elena Popova

elena@russellmaliphant.com

“Light, as well as movement, can be choreographic – both capable of fluidly or dynamically moving an audiences attention through space & time. They can act in partnership, with shared considerations that work together to create sites of conflict and connection, divergence and harmony - the body situated at the interface shapes space & creates mood through which meaning is engendered. When that relationship is considered deeply, the process of choreography changes.”
— Dr Russell Maliphant OBE
“Sound doesn’t accompany movement — it provokes it. A shift in sonic atmosphere can completely reframe the intention of a phrase, the emotional weight of a gesture, the way a body is perceived in space. In this intensive, we want participants to feel that transformation directly.”
— Dana Fouras, Composer & Creative Collaborator
An artistic performance featuring a man carrying a woman on his shoulder in a dark setting with focused lighting.
A group of five ballet dancers perform on stage, with one dancer being lifted horizontally by two others. The stage is dark with patterned lighting on the floor.
A group of people in a dance studio preparing for a class, with some standing and some sitting on the floor, inside a large room with big windows and black curtains.
A woman performing a dance or yoga pose, with her shadow creating an artistic silhouette on the wall behind her, illuminated by a warm light.
A dancer in a red and blue costume performs on stage, illuminated by a spotlight against a dark background, with an expressive pose and extended arms.
A dancer stands on a stage with a spotlight, surrounded by falling white powder that creates a cloud around them, in a dark setting.

About Russell Maliphant

Russell Maliphant is widely regarded as one of Britain’s leading choreographers. Trained at the Royal Ballet School, he has created over 50 works and collaborated with artists of international stature including Sylvie Guillem, Robert Lepage, Dana Fouras, Isaac Julian, Panagiotis Tomaras & lighting designer Michael Hulls, whose long-term partnership with Maliphant has redefined the relationship between movement and light in contemporary performance.

Russell’s accolades include an Olivier Award, 2 South Bank Show Awards, 4 Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards, and an OBE for services to dance. In 2020 he gained a PhD from Canterbury Christ Church University for academic research into anatomy and somatic practice within choreography. He is Associate Artist at Sadler’s Wells and has set works on the English National Ballet, Munich’s Bayerische Staats Ballet, BalletBoyz, Lyon Opera Ballet, The Batsheva Ensemble, and Ballet de Lorraine among many others. Russell Maliphant Dance Company was established in 1996.

About Dana Fouras

Dana Fouras is a composer, performer and one of the most distinctive creative voices in contemporary dance. Trained as a classical dancer in Australia and at The Royal Ballet School - where she won Adeline Genée Silver medals in 1984 and 1985 and a Prix de Lausanne medal in 1986 - she joined The Royal Ballet Company in 1988, creating the role of Lead Girl in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Soirée Musicale and dancing leading roles in MacMillan’s Romeo & Juliet, Swan Lake and My Brother My Sisters. In 1994 she left the Royal Ballet to pursue a career in independent dance.

Her creative collaboration with Russell Maliphant began in 1998 and has since produced some of RMDC’s most celebrated work: the duet Sheer (Time Out Live Award, 2002); the solo Two - performed worldwide for over 20 years by artists including Sylvie Guillem, Carlos Acosta and Roberto Bollé - and most recently The Space Between, co-developed with video artist Panagiotis Tomaras.

As a composer, Dana designed the sound for RMDC’s full-length production Silent Lines (co-produced by Sadler’s Wells), for three consecutive maliphantworks seasons at the Coronet Theatre - the 2017 production winning the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Best New Dance Production - and for the National Youth Dance Company’s 2020 production. She has received two Critics’ Circle National Dance Award nominations for Best Female Dancer and in 2023 was invited to coach principals of Paris Opéra Ballet for Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon.

Her approach to composition is rooted in the creative process itself: sound as a dramaturgical force, built in relationship to the body rather than imposed upon it - precisely what participants of The Creative Intensive will experience first-hand.