Our story began in 2013, when our Founder and Artistic Director Nikki Watson created a duet exploring her changing relationship with her Mum, whose Multiple Sclerosis symptoms had begun to worsen.
Nikki created her first professional work, You Remind Me Of Someone I Once Knew, in 2012, which reflected on the ways the disease was impacting her Mum’s life. Nikki could see how valuable creative movement could be for helping her Mum to manage her symptoms and maintain her wellbeing. When she tried to find sessions her Mum could attend, she discovered that there weren’t any available. So, building on her experience as a professional dance artist and seasoned community practitioner, she set up classes in her local area that were accessible for people with a range of neurological conditions, including Parkinson’s, Multiple Sclerosis and acquired brain injury. In the process, CoDa Dance was born.
In 2017, Nikki started providing ‘dance as rehabilitation’ sessions at London’s Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability where today CoDa delivers our honed Dance for Neurology programme sessions on nine of the hospital’s 13 wards.
A year later, Nikki began exploring how CoDa could use creative technology to better communicate the stories of the neuro-disabled people who co-create and co-direct our work. This exploration into technology has continued and today we are one of a small number of companies that fuses creative technologies with dance to create high-quality innovative and interactive experiences.
Over a decade since our story began, we continue to make meaningful dance experiences with and for neuro-disabled people, their family and loved ones, and the specialist clinicians and support staff who work with them. We invite them directly into the artistic process, in their place on their terms, and in the process connect people and improve lives by telling stories through dance.
Recent Comments