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​ABOUT OPHEY

Dance Artists | Movement Director Educator | Producer

Dance is, for me, a way to sense and understand the world through the body.
 

My practice explores how movement can serve as a form of embodied inquiry—a means of noticing, questioning, and generating knowledge through corporeality. I engage in performance, teaching, and practice-as-research, utilising choreography as both an artistic creation and a method of investigation.

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My diverse dance background drawing from traditional West African dance, African diasporic movement practices, contact improvisation, somatic and embodied approaches, my work investigates rhythm, relationality, and collective presence. These practices allow me to explore how cultural memory, identity, and environment are expressed and negotiated through the body.​

Somatic methodologies such as the Feldenkrais Method, Body-Mind Centering (BMC), the Franklin Method, and the Skinner Release Technique (SRT) inform my approach to movement. They encourage an attentiveness to sensation, perception, and subtle shifts in awareness. Through these practices, I am interested in how embodied listening can reveal hidden layers of experience—how histories, emotions, and environments resonate through movement.

Participation and relational exchange are central to my work. I often develop projects through workshops, collaborative processes, and community engagement, creating spaces where dance becomes a shared experience rather than merely a performance to be observed.

Across my artistic and pedagogical endeavours, I am interested in how movement and the body can open spaces for reflection on the complexities of life, including questions of neurodiversity, ecological awareness, well-being, and the many-layered identities we carry.

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“I am a dance artist, embodied researcher, and facilitator exploring African diasporic movement, somatic practices, and collective ways of knowing through performance, workshops, and practice-as-research."

Ophey

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Ophey Chan (She/Her): I am a London-based dance artist, embodied researcher, and educator working across performance, teaching, and practice-as-research. My practice draws from African diasporic movement traditions, somatic approaches, and improvisational research, exploring the body as a site of memory, relational knowledge, and cultural exchange.

I hold an MFA in Dance and Embodied Practice (Distinction) from the University of Roehampton. My work has been presented internationally, including at Resolution Festival 2025 (London) and the Dancing with Decolonisation Global Conference 2024, and has been featured in peer-reviewed journals of somatic research (Coventry University) as well as in dance reviews for Resolution Festival 2026.

Alongside my artistic practice, I teach as a Visiting Lecturer at the university level, and facilitate various community workshops, creating movement experiences that foreground rhythm, somatic awareness, and collective inquiry.

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