New Head of Dance for CS
Laura Cameron-Lewis gets Head of Dance at Creative Scotland
Creative Scotland has announced that Laura Cameron-Lewis will be its Head of Dance, taking up the role from June 20 2016.
She replaces Anita Clark as the “specialism lead” with responsibility for dance at Scotland’s arts quango. Clark is leaving to take up the post of director at The Work Room – the independent dance space in Glasgow which Cameron Lewis lead for seven years until December last year.
Cameron-Lewis describes herself as “a director and writer who works across theatre, live art, dance and music performance”. Her most recent position was a directorial internship at the Lyceum, working as assistant director to Mark Thomson on The Iliad.
Laura Cameron-Lewis. Photo: Jannica Honey
In January she presented a work-in-progress performance at the Manipulate festival of a long term project with Shona Reppe: When the Light Gets In. About hoarding and what it is like to have a hoarder as parent, the finished production will be performed by Camille O’Sullivan.
Other recent work as a creative has included the award winning multi-arts project, Whatever Gets You Through The Night and Edinburgh’s first virtual festival, (g)Host City.
As an administrator, Cameron Lewis was the director at The Work Room since its foundation in 2008. Under her leadership it grew to four times its original size and achieved regular funding from Creative Scotland. In 2015 she directed Pioneers of Performance, a successful touring dance festival featuring artists supported by the Work Room.
endlessly inventive
In a statement on her appointment Cameron Lewis said: “I look forward to supporting the committed and talented people working in dance in Scotland to help them achieve their ambitions and build on their international recognition and home-grown success.
“Dance artists in Scotland are endlessly inventive in creating ways for us to explore our humanity and reconnect with our bodies. Dance changes people’s lives and is open to anyone to experience.
“Movement is our first language, the communication we acquire before speech and, throughout our lives, dance remains one of the most powerful forms of expression that we have.”
Writing on facebook, she added that as part of Creative Scotland’s commitment to artists she have been given their blessing to continue making work and writing – although not on company time.
ENDS
