Co-directors
Gill Clarke
It is with great sadness we share the news that after many years of living with cancer Gill Clarke died on November 15 2011 as she lived, calmly and with great poise. ID has lost a wonderful co-director and inspiring artist. However, we have been working together to ensure our vision of ID continues to grow.
Gill Clarke was an independent dance artist. She was a founder member of Siobhan Davies Dance Company and also performed and collaborated with other choreographers including Rosemary Butcher, Rosemary Lee, Janet Smith, Kate Brown and Marina Collard.
Gill regarded teaching as an integral part of her artistic practice. She regularly led masterclasses and workshops internationally for students, professionals and companies, and collaborated with filmmaker Becky Edmunds on a multi-screen installation - Stones and Bones.
Head of Performance Studies at Laban – London 2000-2006, she continued a close working association with the organisation and was a member of the 'choreographic lab' research project supported by Northampton University. Gill was awarded an MBE for services to Dance and was an Honorary Visiting Professor at University of Ulster.
Fiona Millward
Fiona Millward has worked throughout the UK and abroad as a dancer, teacher and choreographer since 1985. She regularly teaches in the UK and abroad both independently and for the British Council. Her teaching takes place in a variety of settings, from independent classes to companies and institutions, and for a range of participants, from dance artists to actors to non-professionals. She has led classes and workshops throughout the UK, and in US, Switzerland, Estonia, Russia, Bulgaria and Latvia. Since qualifying as a Franklin Method teacher in 2002, she has shared this work in many different contexts.
Her choreographic work has received a variety of awards and commissions over the years, and she particularly enjoys collaborative ventures with a variety of artists.
From 1999 – 2004 Fiona was Head of Movement at the Oxford School of Drama and from 2001 – 2005 the joint recipient alongside Gill Clarke of a National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts fellowship (NESTA) for her work with the Professional training programme Independent Dance, based at the Siobhan Davies Studios, which she co-directed alongside Gill since 1996.