Debbie Lee-Anthony - Debbie Lee-Anthony

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Debbie Lee-Anthony
Dance Teacher
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Teaching, encouraging and nurturing others has long been a passion of mine. Nothing pleases me more than seeing people of all ages - whether a child, a student in full-time dance training, a keen young community dancer or someone in their seventh or eighth decade, dance freely with joy, expression and abandon
Choreographer
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I love to make work about things that matter - to me and to others. I am particularly interested in the lived experience, creating work about the human condition and collaborating on ideas with others about meaningful subjects that resonate on a universal level with ordinary people.
Performer
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I love to perform in intimate settings, where I can really connect and engage with audience members. Whether performing alone or with others, performance for me is a communal art in its truest sense - about truly connecting with the viewer in sometimes intimate, subtle and yet extraordinary ways. I believe performance can be ‘entertaining’ too! I take performance very seriously but am careful not to take myself too seriously….
WELCOME to my website
I like to dance -  just a bit – well, quite a lot actually...

Graduating from The Place (London School of Contemporary Dance) in 1982, I am as passionate about dance now as I was then. Whether it’s making dance, performing, teaching, facilitating or watching, it happens in a variety of contexts.

My solo choreography has often centred around autobiography with dance and text (see more on this in Projects). Much of my creative work now is collaborating with mature artists and older people’s performance groups.

Teaching has always been a highly rewarding aspect of my career and receiving the University of Winchester’s Senate Learning & Teaching Award in 2014 was a welcome delight. Having left lecturing in Higher Education in 2019, I have now returned to my roots as a freelance teacher and dance artist. Leading the weekly open classes for DANCE SIX-0 in my hometown of Salisbury in Wiltshire, brings me great joy.
Childs Play
TEACHING & FACILITATION
I teach contemporary dance technique for dance undergraduate students, lead improvisation, creative and choreographic workshops and facilitate Intergenerational groups in community settings. I am always happy to tailor a workshop according to need. Please do contact me for more details.


Dancing in coats
CHOREOGRAPHY
I have made dance works for undergraduate dance students over many years and am currently creating work for various dance groups within the community. Recent choreography has included co-creation with my daughter who is a professional dancer and also for a local operatic society.


Mother and daughter performing
PERFORMANCE
My performance work has been presented in a range of settings, but most usually in small-scale venues. Further details regarding my performance history can be seen under Projects pages.



I created ‘Child’s Play’ for D@WIN, the University of Winchester’s student dance company in 2012. We toured to schools and colleges throughout Hampshire, Berkshire and Wiltshire. The work was a fun exploration of childhood games and memories set to music by Penguin Cafe Orchestra.

"Child's Play. "

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Debbie Lee-Anthony
Reviews
A NICE LITTLE PROJECT

Debbie Lee-Anthony knows well how to both engage the public and be in the moment, plus her gently, non-threateningly interactive A nice little project (about being nice and not-nice and lots in-between) was just the right antidote to Ben’s broodingly beastly RE: redrum. Debbie’s a fine performer, a fluid mover with a good speaking voice and a persona (exaggeratedly sweet or tart and yet real underneath) that invites you into her fun, thought-provoking and unintimidatingly interactive show. In this genuinely nice and tasty 20-plus minute work Debbie delivers thought-inducing content – both factual and autobiographical – in a memorably winning manner entailing text, movement and non-threatening audience participation."
Donald Hutera, GOLive festival, September 2014

GO LIVE REVIEW 2015

Part of Donald Hutera’s eclectic festival of dance and other physical performance (which ends at this venue on 18 June but continues in July in Oxford and Winchester), this programme of six pieces seems to have something for everyone.
The bill opened with Neil Fisher and Debbie Lee-Anthony dancing their duet Bette Revisited which presents a no-longer-young couple showing that they can be just as romantic and almost as agile as their young selves.
It begins with them at a table, the man head down, either passed out or dreaming, but smoothly sweeps into a series of variations full of sweeping turns and lifts and some playful mime on a table that express the enduring affection between them and capture that youthful spirit that stays inside us no matter how old our outside appearances.

The second half of the evening brought Debby Lee-Anthony back with a new solo she calls Threshold. Entering holding an hour glass, slow moving, circling and weaving patterns in the air before placing it on the ground, the dance gracefully continues with a wistful tension. It seems to be expressing an awareness of the limits on our lives and making the most of what we have left.

DO  NOT GO GENTLE

A mother and daughter duet about mortality was bound to be swathed in sentiment, all the more so when inspired by the tragedy of a close family member’s demise and with a score composed especially by the deceased woman’s husband. The rage against his father’s death in Dylan Thomas’s eternal poem, read here by Anthony Hopkins, is cleverly patched into Hamilton Lee’s mesmerising score; fusing lyrical romanticism into upbeat techno, interpreted by flowing contemporary movement, punctuated by  LaurenAnthony’s popping, hip hop style. With an hourglass bluntly emphasising the ‘dying of the light’, it could have strayed into mawkishness, but, instead of being suffocated by poignancy, the performance gelled into an uplifting experience.
Graham Watts (Resolution 2017)
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