Artistic Director and Producer of Hip Festival, Brenda Edwards
is an Independent Artist/Teacher, Consultant and Producer. Her
Artistic
professional
career spans
over 19
years as a professional dancer and
choreographer. She has been nominated twice for The Cosmopolitan Woman
of the Year and for her outstanding achievement in Dance.
Brenda Edwards worked as an Associate Producer through the Arts
Council of England’s
Artistic Leadership Programme at Nottingham Playhouse under the directorship
of Ruth McKenzie and later became the Producer for African/Caribbean Arts
before going on to develop Hip. In recent times she has
been the consultant on Innervision in Swindon, and the Assistant
Creative Producer of Cultureshock, the Commonwealth
Games 2002 Arts Programme for the North West.
Edwards has a diverse background
in the arts and her qualities as an active performer and producer helps
to maximise her vision of the arts. She has worked with English
National Ballet as a soloist
under the Artistic Directorship of Peter Schaufuss where she became one
of a few women to dance the leading role in Maurice Bejart’s Bolero and
historically became the first black woman to work in a British Ballet Company.
She has also
been a member of London Contemporary Dance Theatre under the directorship
of Robert Cohan and the Martha Graham Dance Company, New York. She often
work’s
in France with Hungarian Born dancer Eszter Salamon where she is able to
explore her artistic craft.
She is an accomplished dance teacher in many
dance discipline
as well as a choreographer and Arts Consultant. Brenda has performed
in many videos and films, and made her West End debut in John
Caird’s
Children of Eden, choreographed by Matthew Bourne.
She is a recent Graduate in Dance Theory at the De Montfort University
in Leicester. As well as Hip she is currently working with several dancers
in Derby, artistically
producing a regional dance platform and initiative for dancers, she divides
her time by performing and teaching in Europe and extending her artistic
vision and
qualities in Britain.
Brenda was awarded the MBE in the New Year's Honours list 2005, for services
to dance.
|