Our Artist Advisory Group helps to ensure all work programmed at Bradford Arts Centre aligns with our Programming Strands – South Asia Now, This is Bradford and British Diversity – and they will also help us to embed sustainability more deeply into our artistic programme.
The nine artists each bring a wealth of experience and knowledge in artforms including Classical Indian performance, contemporary dance, theatre, folk music and opera.
Born and raised in Botswana, Diana Amma Gyankoma Abankwah is a Ugandan-Ghanaian solo dance artist, painter, writer, musician, and interdisciplinary artist. She is based in Stoke-on-Trent where she relocated from Rwanda in 2022.
In 2022, she created a solo experimental ‘afro-psychedelic’ live-art performance titled Trance-fixed in Wonderland: Stranger Than Psy-Fi — performed at Stoke-on-Trent Pride, and Ensemble Festival in London, and Let’s Dance International Frontiers 2024 as artist-in-residence with Serendipity UK Institute for Black Arts and Heritage.
Diana’s practice is an experimental blend of live performance art that combines experimental cross-genre dance (including Amapiano, tribal fusion, and Bharatnatyam) and music as the primary forms of storytelling. She also fuses spoken word; physical theatre; drag; immersive technologies; and social commentary on generational trauma, spirituality and repressed queerness. Her work seeks to challenge and resist current portrayals and restrictions on Black African identity and performance art.
Learn more about Diana’s performance practice at The Psyber Giantess (@the_psyber_giantess) and artistic practice at Inner Giantess Art (@inner_giantess.art) on Instagram.
Divija Melally is a trained contemporary and Indian classical dancer, graduated from Bath Spa University, with BA (Hons) Dance, dedicated to the arts, and spreading the intricate nuances of dance through performance, teaching, choreography and therapy. She has completed a 2-year diploma in Movement Arts and Mixed Media, which focused on ballet, contemporary and martial arts, from Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts, India. Her creative practice revolves around exploring the amalgamation of contemporary and Indian Classical dance with text. She is interested in creating works that explore social and political themes, and strives to offer new perspectives and stories to her audience. She wants to inform her practice further by conducting workshops for participants of different ages, needs and abilities.
Ella Tighe is a Bradford based Independent Dance Maker.
She makes contemporary dance theatre shows, often narrative led whilst investigating experimental ways of telling stories through contemporary movement, text and sound. It aims to champion undervalued forms of dance, through exposing alternative movement languages and physicality’s than that of typical contemporary dance training.
She began dancing as a Disco Freestyle dancer before a contemporary dance, improvisation and somatic based practice training. She has a BA in Dance, Making & Performance (Cov Uni, UK) and an MA in Performance Practices (ArtEZ, NL). Ella is developing a new work Disco Queen, an autobiographical dance-theatre solo that will explore her experience growing up as a competitive Disco Freestyle dancer.
Alongside her making practice Ella teaches yoga, curates BOLD! Bradford Artist Scratch Night, an artist development initiative in Bradford and is an independent supervisor at Bird College.
Hardeep Sahota is a Huddersfield-based practitioner and specialist in Bhangra. He wrote the book Bhangra: Mystics, Music and Migration, which explores the origins of this folk song and dance from the Panjab in South Asia and its development into part of modern British culture in the hybrid soundscape of British Bhangra and beyond. This originated in academic research and the Heritage Lottery-funded Bhangra Renaissance project. Through ethnographic research, oral history interviews, performances, photography, story-telling and community activity it celebrates the past contribution of all those involved in Bhangra. This ground-breaking work provides an in-depth history of the spiritualism of performance and song, and an overview of the artists involved in influencing its development, as well as contemporaries leading the way of Bhangra’s renaissance amongst the South Asian diaspora in the UK and around the world. Hardeep is an Affiliate Fellow at the University of Huddersfield, in recognition of his research and work with the local community.
Bradford based, British-Bangladeshi working-class writer Kamal Kaan read Architecture at The University of Cambridge and has MA in TV Fiction Writing.
He worked as Story, Location and Script Consultant on double BAFTA nominated film Ali and Ava written and directed by Clio Barnard, Story and Development Consultant on Channel 4 drama Dance School (broadcasting 2024). His work for Radio 4 includes: Breaking Up With Bradford, Father’s Land In Mother Tongue, Bangla Bantams and 3-part series BatGirls – currently available on BBC Sounds.
His work for theatre includes: Amma for Tara Theatre London, Aaliyah: After Antigone Freedom Studios, Bradford and Decades Leeds Playhouse.
He is currently developing his first feature film with BFI. Kamal is also co-chair of Bradford Producing Hub and have delivered many workshops for Bradford based organisations such as Freedom Studios, Bradford Literature Festival and Secondary schools. He is keen to nurture, develop and empower local artists.
Twitter @kamal_kaan
Originally from Kolkata, Kavya is a dancer and project manager who works between Oxford and London. With an educational background both in International Development and Dance Studies, she brings a dynamic mix of research, practice, anthropology and global perspectives to her work. Kavya is passionate about making dance accessible to wider communities and bolstering the culture sector. As the Programmes Coordinator at Akademi, she juggles projects across health, community, and corporate settings, working with a wide range of South Asian artists. A trained Bharatanatyam dancer and yoga enthusiast herself, Kavya also works as a freelance artist, performer, and choreographer, weaving together inspiration from various Indian dance styles. With over 25 years of training, her practice dives into social, political, lived, and personal experiences, with a keen interest in the intersections of culture, gender, and identity.
Leah Francis is a theatre maker from Leeds and has experience in directing, facilitating, performing, and writing. She trained for a degree in BA Hons Drama at Northumbria University, Newcastle. Since finishing her degree, she worked for various companies including Live Theatre Newcastle, Leeds Playhouse, Mind the Gap, and Freedom Studios. Her passion lies in creating theatre involving song, movement and spoken word that seeks to empower the community. Leah also has a desire for telling diverse women’s stories and in 2013 set up her own Theatre Company, Speak Woman Speak. More recently Leah has completed her MA in performance at Leeds Beckett University with Distinction and a Noel Witts prize for Excellence.
Maddie Morris is an artist who strives to make a difference in the world. Bold, insightful and refreshingly unique, they take traditional song in new directions to shine a light on contemporary issues.
Folk songs have always told stories, but how Maddie makes their mark is by turning this storytelling into action. Described by Jim Moray as “leading the next generation of socially conscious songwriters”, they use their work to highlight inequality, challenge viewpoints and provide an inclusive space for shared experiences.
Whether they’re turning a centuries-old ballad on its head or writing something new, Maddie places their focus on drawing out true meaning rather than being true to tradition. Their debut studio album, Skin, (release February 2024) is a beautifully crafted collection of songs which amplifies the stories of those often marginalised by society.
https://www.maddiemorrismusic.co.uk/
Indian-Scottish Neil Balfour is an award-winning British Baritone and Voiceover Artist. He started musical life as a pianist, punk-rocker and conductor, graduating from Leeds College of Music, the Royal Northern College of Music and the National Opera Studio, before falling in love with all-things-voice to tell stories.
A former Britten-Pears, Samling, Momentum and Concordia artist, he is the first opera singer to be booked by the Glastonbury Festival in the Astrolabe Tent and the first to beatbox in an opera at Longborough Festival Opera.
Highlights in recent seasons include his American debut as Father Thumbprint for Portland Opera; Prince Yamadori Madama Butterfly and The Shoemaker (world premiere) for Welsh National Opera; Alice Through the Looking Glass (world premiere) for the London Symphony Orchestra; Jean Arp Sophie (world premiere) for Tête à Tête; a recital with Roderick Williams for Thaxted Festival and recitals about Schumann, Sondheim and Parfum for Oxford International Song Festival.