This workshop focuses on building vocabulary and confidence in the Acro Dance style. We will start each day with a highly physical training from Mirabelle's practice. A training focused on coordination, resistance, and building strength through movement which will help you get confidence and fluidity for your acrobatics .

If you already have a level of acrobatics, this will be an opportunity to learn variations, details, precision and add movement quality to your tricks.

In the afternoon we will focus on dance with Gabbie, we will warm up the rhythms, movement qualities and train the established paths within the floorwork. The class will build up to longer improvised tasks, working with off-balance, maintaining momentum and redirecting energy. We will learn phrases that combine movement with acrobatics, as well as explore ideas from physical theatre to work on presence and being with the audience.

We will have some theory as well from Rudolf Laban, such choreological practice and beyond. It will help you understand how you move and what choices you can make when devising to discover new paths of expression with your own body.

Mirabelle Gremaud

Graduating with a BA in physical theatre from the Accademia Dimitri (CH) and a post-graduate diploma from the Laban Conservatoryof Dance (UK); Mirabelle is an actress but also a dancer with a specificmouvement language that involves acrobatics, contortion and a musician,harpist and singer.

Credits

Wise Children’s productions: Wise Children, London Old Vic Theatre(Young Nora),Malory Towers Bristol Old Vic (Irene),Wuthering Heights, National Theatre (Zillah and swing, Little Match Girl, Frome (Jackson and Princess), BlueBeard, York Theatre Royal (Lost girl and Assistant).

Liam Steel: Peter Pan at the Birmingham repertory theatre (Tinkerbell).

Extraordinary Bodies: Waldo's Circus of Magic and Terror at the Bristol Old Vic (Queenie and Margot)

She’s also worked in Switzerland with directors such as, Omar Porras,Joelle Richard, and won the cultural grant prize by theLeenaards private foundation in 2021. She writes music and composes songs for theatre, as well as devising her own work and music underthe label «Le Mirabellier».

Gabrielle Cook

Gabrielle is a dancer and acrobat; she is a performer, teacher and movement director for the circus. She spent her childhood competing in elite artistic gymnastics before training at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, graduating in 2014. Throughout her career, she has had the pleasure of creating and touring with many inspiring artists and companies such as Acrojou, Becky Namgauds, Tom Dale Company, Scarabeus and Pirates of the Carbine and Kamala Devam Dance.

Since 2017, he has taken Acro Dance workshops on tour throughout the UK and Europe, which has been requested by companies and educational programmes such as 2Faced Dance, NoFit State, Fourth Monkey, Circomedia, Trip Space, Circus Festival Ireland, Circus Central and CREAT circ.

In 2019, he formed Sneaky&Raptor with collaborator Nat Whittingham when they were commissioned by Glastonbury Arts and Bristol Circus City to develop their first major work, A Different Beast, which premiered at Glastonbury Festival 2019.

After a summer of performing with Highly Sprung, he is currently teaching at circ CREAT alongside research and creation with Quiet Eye Film (Barney White), and Anatomical, a London-based dance and theatre company.