About | Xanthe Beesley Movement Director

My interest is movement and how this can be integrated in all kinds of ways into every performance context. To every project I bring a deep and long engagement with movement - as a maker, performer, director and dramaturg. The concentrated focus of movement in performance provides a more holistic experience for performers, creatives and audiences. It is the starting point, and the ‘puzzle piece’ that helps bring a work together - often in unexpected and richer ways.

I draw my experience from a range of influences including classical and contemporary dance, alignment based practices, physical approaches to character, Laban, improvisation, Viewpoints and more.

What connects everything I do is the human body: what it is like to live with one, and how human bodies move, communicate and create in spaces together.

How do we move through the world? Why is movement so important?

These questions are key to the work I do and how I do it. I’ve built a creative practice over many years via a number of different performance-making branches and disciplines.

Theatre Maker. Movement Director. Facilitator. Dramaturg. Artistic Director. Producer. Community Engager. Empowerer. Educator. Advocate. Mentor.

The list of labels is long. It tells some of my story but not all. I’m interested in networks more than hierarchies and cross-pollination more than specialisation.

I work to develop community connectedness, challenge structures and question the relevance and effect of actions and ideas.

Roaming from black boxes to white cubes, proscenium arches to found spaces, my work is made with bodies and politics, language and ideas, time and collaboration, sweat and care. Works are built with actors and makers, dancers, writers and devisors, students and citizens.

All of them humans, moving - making work, making things happen, aiming to make a difference.