Green Candle Staff

Artistic Director: FERGUS EARLY
Associate Director: RACHEL ELLIOTT

Development Services: ANNIE POOLEY
Administrative Services: MISHA AGZARIAN
Community Dance Artist: ADESOLA AKINLEYE

Community Dance Artist: LOUISE KLARNETT

FERGUS EARLY Artistic Director
Fergus began his dancing career with the Royal Ballet, later studying at the London Contemporary Dance School where he became a senior teacher. He was a founder member of X6 Dance Space and New Dance magazine. In 1987 he formed Green Candle, a dance company working in community and educational contexts for all age groups and abilities. Green Candle has won three Digital Dance Awards and was awarded £250,000 from the National Lottery for a large scale community project in the London borough of Islington, which included 8 performances at the new Sadler's Wells Theatre in March 1999.

He is the winner of several awards, including a Greater London Arts Dance Award, a Lisa Ullman Traveling Bursary and the Time Out/Dance Umbrella Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement.

RACHEL ELLIOTT Associate Director

Rachel joined Green Candle as Education Officer in 1995 becoming full-time Associate Director in September 2004, with responsibility for the company's Education & Participation Programme. In 2005 Rachel conceived and co-directed Listening Eyes , Green Candle's production for deaf and hearing children; in 2000 she developed and directed forWard motion! the company's participatory performance for children in hospital; and in 1997 was a dancer and choreographer for Dances for Small Spaces for older audiences.

Rachel trained as a dancer at the Arts Educational School and the Rambert School of Ballet and has over 20 years experience as a dance artist, educator and trainer. She performed regularly for 10 years for a number of companies including Race Apart New Asian Dance Theatre, Common Ground Sign Dance Theatre, Focus on…Dance, Chamber Dance Theatre and on Central Television . Rachel has led numerous dance projects all over the UK in many different educational and community settings. She has taught and choreographed for and with children and adults of all ages and abilities, including deaf and disabled people, for a range of arts organisations such as London Contemporary Dance Theatre ( Touring Workshop Unit 1987 – 93), Sadler's Wells , English Touring Opera and Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company . Rachel has taught weekly dance sessions at Great Ormond Street Hospital since 1992 for children with psychological illnesses. From September 2002 to August 2004 she was part-time Senior Education Officer at Akademi: South Asian Dance UK .

Rachel has delivered many training sessions for teachers, play, health and arts professionals and presented at conferences in Britain and abroad including New Directions in Community Dance , (Foundation for Community Dance, 2006); Excellence, Innovation & Creativity (Excellence in Cities, Islington 2004), Dance and the Child International (daCi) (Finland, 1997) . She has lectured at London Contemporary Dance School (Dance & Disability Course 1996 – 2001) and at Hackney Community College (Community Dance Course 1995); she has taught dance for Young Dancer' Saturday Programme at The Place (1988 – 90) ; Arts Educational School, Tring (1986 – 87); and at Rhodes School of Dance, Greece (1985 – 86) . In 1996 Rachel was awarded a Lisa Ullman Travelling Scholarship to research community dance in the San Francisco Bay Area and in 1990 was presented with the Sahitya Kala Parishad Award, in New Delhi, India. She has a strong interest in Deaf Culture and Arts and holds the CACDP Stage 3 Advanced Certificate in British Sign Language. Rachel is co-chair of the Dance Educators Group.

ANNIE POOLEY Development Manager
Annie joined the company as General Manager and has now moved to the role of Development Manager. Although she was working in commercial PR prior to starting Company Management, Annie had a long standing interest in the arts, dancing as a hobby when still a child. Her first foray into employment in the arts was with Footsbarn Theatre Company as their PR officer, and she went on to become their administrator.

Jobs that followed included; Programme Manager at Tom Allen Arts Centre,Stratford E15, and General Manager for Inner City Theatre Company (1982 - 1992).

Annie has also carried out freelance development work for: Tragic Carpet, Bouge - Le - La, Physical Visual Theatre Company, Pegasus Opera, Futures TIE, The Arts Mean Business (where she developed an accredited music training programme), and Rose's Thoughts.

MISHA AGZARIAN Administrator

Trained in Australia, Misha combines experience in both arts management and administration with an extensive background in performance and dance teaching. She graduated with a BA Dance from the Victorian College of Arts in 2002 and continued her training by completing post graduate study in Arts Management at the University of Melbourne. In 2004 Misha became Administration Manager for Leaps and Bounds, one of Melbourne's largest performing arts schools. She joined Green Candle in 2005.

ADESOLA AKINLEYE Community Dance Artist

Adesola began training at the Arts Educational School and Rambert Academy whilst performing with the London Youth Dance Theatre. She joined the Dance Theatre of Harlem 1985 – 1990 before becoming a freelance dancer and choreographer in New York, the Caribbean and London (Carol Straker Dance Company and Union Dance Company.) She also studied choreography with Bessie Schoenberg and Gyrotonics and Yoga with Julio Horvath. In 1992 she founded Saltare Dance Company in London moving the company to New York to become Saltare Foundation for the Arts. Adesola was awarded Woman of the Year 1999, Town of Islip for the foundation’s work with the community. She lectured in the theatre department at State University of New York, Stony Brook. In 2001 Adesola was General School Director, School of Contemporary Dancers, Winnipeg. Following which she started Dancingstrong – a dance and education company working with education initiatives, Learning through the Arts, Arts Smarts and residences in schools. She also lectured in the physical education faculty, University of Manitoba. In 2004 Adesola received a Manitoba Arts Council grant for ‘ Running with Scissors – an evening of dance and film’. She also was awarded a ‘First Video’ award to continue her work with dance and film. In May 2005 Adesola moved back to London, joining Green Candle part-time in September whilst continuing to work as a freelance dance artist and educator. Adesola is currently working with Creative Partnerships London North and Enfield LEA and has been awarded a choreographic research project by Chisenhale Dance Space for their spring 2006 season.

LOUISE KLARNETT Community Dance Artist

Louise began her training in Essex where she became a member of the Essex Dance youth dance company ‘Essance' which led to her interest in contemporary dance and subsequent training at De Montfort University, Leicester. After graduating in 1998, she co-founded and performed for three years with East Midlands based dance company Fervent Defacto, performing at a variety of traditional and untraditional venues around the midlands and beyond. In London, Louise has performed with inter-generational company ‘mad.g' and Coaxial (provisional movement collective) – a group of trained and untrained dancers, visual artist, designer, and classical and digital musicians. Over summer 2005 she was commissioned by visual artists Mark and Stephen Beasley to choreograph ‘Beasley Street' for two people in their mid-eighties. The live work was performed at Camden Arts Centre and a video version was shown as part of ‘The Artist with Two Brains' in Birmingham in December 2005. Louise is currently researching and exploring other dance projects. Louise has been working within education and community settings since 1999 as a teacher and choreographer spanning all ages and sectors of the community. She has worked with Essex Dance and Surestart under 5's programmes, play and youth services, in primary, secondary and further education environments, with adults and older people's groups, as well as taught and choreographed for physically disabled people and those with learning disabilities. Prior to joining Green Candle at the end of January 2005, Louise was Dance Challenge Co-ordinator for the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham's Arts Development Team. Whilst there she delivered school-based dance lessons as part of a continuing professional development training programme for teachers and wrote a resource book which was distributed to all primary and special schools in the borough.