Meet ICDS7 Keynote: 'Funmi Adewole Elliott

Funmi Adewole Elliott is a performer, dramaturge and academic. She works part of the time as a senior lecturer in Dance studies at De Montfort University Leicester, England. She started out as a media practitioner and performance poet in Nigeria. On relocating to England in 1994, She moved into touring as a performer with mainly Physical/Visual theatre and African dance drama companies. Her credits include performances with Ritual Arts, Horse and Bamboo Mask and Puppetry Company, Artistes-in-Exile, Adzido Pan-African Dance Ensemble, Mushango African dance and Music Company and the Chomondeleys, a contemporary dance company. Whilst touring, over a period of ten years, she also developed a track record as an independent scholar and a dance advocate through self-directed study and voluntary work. Her research interests which emerged from this combination work experience include the theorising of Dance of Dance of Africa and the Diaspora within professional contexts and the workplace, somatic inquiry in relation to social dancing and artistic citizenship and dance training. The developing of dance facilitation methods in relation to Africanist dance principles is central to her practice. She has led dance workshops at PARTS in Belgium, The Place, Siobhan Davies Studios, E15 and the Ageless Festival in England, Ecole Des Sables in Senegal and University of Ibadan, Nigeria. She began her academic studies at the University of Ibadan, gaining a B.A in European Languages. She also holds an M.A in Postcolonial Studies, a Professional graduate certificate in Education and PhD in Dance studies. In 2019, she was awarded a life-time achievement award for contributions to Dance of the African Diaspora in the UK by One Dance UK, the UK National body for Dance. She continues to perform as storyteller and movement artist.