ABOUT US
Dance is our passion and keeps us younger, happier and connected to a shared community
SAGE DANCE COMPANY
PATRON Irek Mukhamedov OBE
FOUNDER Simon Rice
DANCERS Barbara Berkeley-Hill, Liz Heasman, Catriona Maccoll, Claire Martin, Felicity McDonald, Stephen Rowe, Claire Turner, Gilly Wesley, Jean Woollard
CHOREOGRAPHERS Kelly Craige, Alex Ferrelly, Marie Forbes, Jennifer Jackson, Kim Mendez, Sarah Miller, Thomas Page, Fionuala Power, Simon Rice
HMRC Charity No. 1190384
Trustees: Liz Heasman (Chair), Claire Martin (Treasurer), Barbara Berkeley-Hill, Felicity McDonald, Stephen Rowe, Gilly Wesley, Jean Woollard.
DANCERS
Barbara Berkeley-Hill
Barbara has had a lifelong passion for dance. From the ages of 7-15 she attended a small but very good provincial dance school and received a solid grounding in all forms of dance. She danced her way through university but then there was the inevitable gap as the demands of family life and a busy professional career in higher education took over. She is now enjoying a very active retirement and is delighted to have the chance to dance again as a member of Sage.
Liz Heasman
Liz has a fine art background but her interest in theatre and film led to a concentrated period of dance and mime studies in her twenties. After a long distraction for a career in the visual arts, she was surprised to discover that it is possible at any stage to rekindle the joy of performance in music and dance and feels privileged to be part of a creative company such as Sage.
Catriona Maccoll
Catriona trained as an actress and worked in theatre and TV for eleven years. She then retrained as a dramatherapist, working in the field for twenty-six years. She has studied various forms of dance. At the moment her main interests are tribal fusion belly dance, barefoot flamenco and dervish dance. She keeps fit through yoga, pilates and ballet floor barre. Joined Sage in 2012.
Claire Martin
Claire has loved dance from a young age, particularly ballet, which probably came from her grandmother who saw Alicia Markova dance with the Festival Ballet in 1951. Claire still has the programme. She attended a good local dance school where she learnt ballet, tap, and modern dance in the style of Isadora Duncan based on the high ideals of Ancient Greece: beauty, philosophy and humanity. She started work at 18 but carried on dancing into her twenties, with the odd local amateur performances in pantomime. She then didn’t dance for some 20 years until a local tap class rekindled her passion. After retiring in 2017 she found a ballet class for over 55s linked to Sadlers Wells and was accepted to join Sage in 2018.
Felicity’s family moved to Zimbabwe from England when she was five. At eight she discovered dance and participated in every form available – ballet, Spanish and modern. At the age of thirteen she moved to a remote boarding school and was unable to continue with dancing. Following school she attended University in South Africa and became a teacher of children with dyslexia. In 2000 she returned to the UK with her family where, amongst other things, she learned Italian, drove a bus as a tour guide, taught English as a foreign language and began to do voluntary work with children. She kept fit with every form of exercise from aerobics to Zumba. Miraculously in November 2014 she discovered Sage and was, at last, able to return to dance.
Stephen Rowe
Stephen’s mother took him to his first ballet class when he was 8 years old. He danced in a reconstruction of Yvonne Rainer’s “Chair/Pillow” at London’s Toynbee Studios, appeared in the T-Mobile commercial shot at Liverpool Street Station and most recently worked with Rosemary Lee in a Dance Umbrella piece called “Square Dances”. Stephen has spent most of his working life as a producer/director in corporate television.
Claire Turner
Claire always has been in love with ballet from a very young age. At five she remembers being completely mesmerised by the twirling ballerina in a jewellery box thinking it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen and wanted to do the same. She started ballet and tap classes at the age of seven and as a shy child dancing helped to express her emotions. Ballet soon became a lifelong passion and she went on to train full time in Liverpool then at the West Street School, Covent Garden. Over the years, she has continued to dance and perform and now feels very privileged and excited to be part of the Sage Dance Company.
Gilly Wesley
Gilly won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dancing at the age of 11. Two years later she had the honour of being chosen to appear in the annual Gala hosted by her idol, the Academy’s patron, Margot Fonteyn, whom she had the honour of meeting before appearing in the performance at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, alongside many famous dancers from all over the world. A move to Germany in her twenties and a subsequent career in international marketing meant that it was not until 2007 that she returned to the world of dance, initially to take up ballet classes again. She danced with Counterpoint Dance from 2010-2013, joined Damn Fine Dance Company shortly thereafter, where she developed her contemporary skills. She was accepted to join Sage Dance Company under Simon Rice’s direction in February 2012.
Jean Woollard
As a child, Jean loved watching classic Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies on TV and dreamed of becoming a dancer. She attended ballet, tap and ‘modern’ classes regularly from the age of 7 and continued into her teens and twenties when she began working as a professional actor in theatre and television. Sadly, she never starred in a musical but her love of dance has never waned and, as a teacher of English and Drama, she directed and choreographed a number of shows for her young pupils. Since 1989 she has run her own small consultancy business specialising in leadership development and coaching. She has been dancing with Rambert’s Mercury Movers class for over 55s since 2013 and joined Sage Dance Company in January 2015. She is delighted that her dreams of performing as a dancer have finally come true!
Patron: IREK MUKHAMEDOV OBE
We are deeply honoured and thrilled that the legendary Irek Mukhamedov became Sage Dance Company’s Patron in 2018. Born in Russia in 1960, he joined The Bolshoi Ballet as a Principal in 1981. During his nine years with the company his title roles included Spartacus, Ivan the Terrible, Romeo and Juliet and The Golden Age. In 1990 he left the Soviet Union and joined The Royal Ballet where he performed a wide variety of classical and contemporary roles, including those created for him by Kenneth MacMillan in Winter Dreams and The Judas Tree, and by Twyla Tharp in Mr Worldly Wise. He danced the role of Diego Rivera in Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Broken Dreams for the ENB, and created the solo in Arthur Pita’s Jingling from the Zills. He travels extensively teaching and coaching.
Founder: SIMON RICE
Simon was a First Soloist in The Royal Ballet (1982-92) and the first male dancer to perform The Chosen One in MacMillan’s The Rite of Spring. Freelance work includes Carousel at The National Theatre; I Do for Dante Or Die Theatre; The Skin of Our Teeth at the Young Vic; the role of Puck for the ENO production of The Fairy Queen; A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Nationaltheater Mannheim; and award-winning Giselle for the Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre. For K Ballet he choreographed The Vary People; co-founded the physical theatre company, flamingofeather, and dance company, Abundance, creating pieces Still Moving, Moonshake, and Grace. He was awarded The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship to study models for social inclusion in Brazil; and formed The Sage Dance Company in 2010.
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