SPACE

Often a companion in practice to other artists and arts organisations - as dramaturg, associate, host, facilitator, writer, researcher - Luke has worked at the intersections of where dance, choreography and contemporary performance meet with other worlds for over twenty-years. With a particular focus upon ‘thinking through practice’ Luke collaborates as part of projects and processes that attend to alterity, with hope of effecting embodied change in the ways people encounter, engage with and reconsider notions of death, dying and loss; identity and difference; interdependence, community, care.

At the heart of this work is an intention to tend to space for possibility, for re-remembering, for careful conversation, for imagination and emergence. Luke’s curatorial and participatory projects have brought artists and experts from different fields and realities together to explore relationships between words and movement, the poetic and choreographic, periphery and community.

Primarily working with artists whose practices, values and lived experiences question dominant norms, Luke seeks to cultivate the best conditions for myriad bodyminds to make the kinds of work they want to, on their own terms and rhythms. As a dramaturg, Luke has worked alongside Caroline Bowditch, Claire Cunningham and Jess Curtis, Jassy Earl and Chloë Smith, Mirjam Gurtner, Janice Parker, Farah Saleh and Rachel Drazek and Robert Softley-Gale for Birds of Paradise Theatre Company. In 2018 they were Guest Dramaturg as part of South East Dance’s Dramaturg in Residence Programme. 

As a facilitator Luke seeds and steers exploratory processes for artists to think through their practice. Focusing on ‘the how, the way, the why’ of making these have included: Salves for Future Selves, Sit With Me and PUSH+ Home Lab with Imaginate; Being Enough with Arts Access Victoria and Unexpected Bodies in Unexpected Places and Skånes Dansteater for the European partnership project Beyond Access both with Caroline Bowditch; The Artist Support Weekender with PAL Labs, Claire Hicks and Roanne Dods. Curatorial projects include: The Talking Place for Fevered Sleep as part of Men & Girls Dance; What Next with Frank Bock for Independent Dance; A (Supper) Room Full of Words with Kat Bridge for Greenwich Dance and; the In Dialogue series for Candoco Dance Company, where Luke was formerly Head of Learning and Research.

Luke has taught and lectured for under and postgraduate students, artists and professionals worldwide - including Central School of Speech and Drama, D.O.C.H Stockholm, Trinity Laban, London Contemporary Dance School, The Royal Academy of Dance - and has been an artist adviser to a range of choreographers, companies and institutions - including: AnnieVickySarah; Orrow Bell; Ania Nowak; Nigel Charnock; Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company; Noemi Lakmaier; Catherine Long; Jardin D’Europe with Southbank Centre; Kate Marsh with Metal; Ella Mesma; Claricia Parinussa; Lucy Suggate; Athina Vahla and Wellcome Trust Arts Awards. Luke was Chair of the board for Chisenhale Dance Space from 2012-2016, a nominator for the Paul Hamlyn Breakthrough Awards 2018, a Jerwood Artist Advisor and now a trustee of Siobhan Davies Dance Studios.