Diamond Dance

Diamond Dance was founded by Artistic Director, Emma Diamond in New York City, giving its debut performances at the Cunningham Studios in Greenwich Village in October 1993. The company’s first choreographic evening was created while Emma was still a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and attended by Merce Cunningham himself.

Diamond Dance’s second season was presented by the prestigious Danspace project at one of the oldest churches in Manhattan, St. Mark’s Church. Here Diamond Dance embarked on the first of a series of six collaborations with the Italian composer, Academy Award winner Dario Marianelli. In 1995 Diamond Dance toured to Mexico, having been invited to open the newly built theatre in the Centro Nacional de las Artes, Mexico City.

Since then Diamond Dance has self-produced and self-funded dozens of projects both in the US, the UK, as well as being involved in many educational projects offered alongside its performance activities, in schools, colleges, theatres and universities so as to introduce students and their teachers to contemporary dance often for the first time.

From 1999 – 2003 Emma Diamond transformed a derelict warehouse in Shoreditch, London into a brand new fully equipped dance studio. The company gave many in house studio performances in the newly converted Diamond Dance Studio, but importantly the space provided much needed income to help fund the work, by providing rehearsal space for many musical theatre and dance companies as well as offering a full range of evening classes for local dance enthusiasts. The space closed in 2003 so the company could focus purely on its creative productions and performances. Diamond Dance Company is now based at The Hidden Space in Haringey, North London.

In 2017 Diamond Dance piloted its first apprenticeship programme on students of London Contemporary Dance School and Central School of Ballet. Now in it’s third year Diamond Dance is delighted to continue its on-going apprenticeship programme, giving young vocational students their first opportunity as paid professional dancers in tandem with the London Studio Centre. This summer ex-principal of the Royal Ballet, Stephen Wicks, joins Diamond Dance to co-director the apprenticeship programme which in 2019 features partnering skills as the programme’s main focus area.

Diamond Dance is currently preparing for it’s upcoming launch of its first moving exhibition; ‘SKIN - A Journey across the Human Body,’ exploring micro-choreography. Diamond Dance received its first funding to develop a series of ‘Movement Installations’ from Yorkshire and Humberside Arts Board in 1998 and that summer was invited by Jo Butterworth, director of the University of Bretton Hall in Wakefield, to make the first movement installations on her students. Following this residency the Institute of Contemporary Art in London invited Diamond to create a one-woman exhibition for their art gallery. However without funding, before digital technology was readily available, the vision for the work had to kept on hold.

We are delighted in 2019, to be able at last to present our vision of a moving art gallery featuring micro-choreography through a series of movement installations. ‘SKIN – A Journey across the human body’ is the company’s first exhibition is one of a series of eight subsequent themed moving exhibitions, which aim to show contemporary dance, not only as an evocative performance art, but to demonstrate its central place within the visual arts. The occasion of the first of Diamond Dance’s moving exhibition also marks Emma Diamond’s premiere as a composer. Skin will feature specially written music (scored principally for traditional orchestral instruments) that creates a unique sound world to accompany each installation.