spells (2019) by Charlie Ashwell in collaboration with Frances Morgan. Photo Jemima Yong
Working Titles
A residency by Charlie Ashwell
Part of LIVE EDITIONS
Residency dates
5 – 9 July 2026
Open studio
Thursday 9 July
1.30pm – 3.30pm
FREE
A relaxed event
Full information and booking here
Venue
Leaf Hall
51 Seaside
Eastbourne
BN22 7NB
This LIVE EDITIONS residency welcomes artist Charlie Ashwell to Eastbourne.
Charlie Ashwell is a dancer, scholar, and dramaturg who is researching dance as a form of magic, currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Sussex exploring how dance might create alternative ways of imagining and navigating the world.
During her residency week at Leaf Hall, Charlie will be delving further into how dance is watched and seen, joined by choreographer Seke Chimutengwende as an outside eye to explore questions such as:
How does dance invite audiences to see, dream, speculate, envision, or hallucinate?
How might the title of a dance transform the dance that is seen?
And what if we thought about this transformation as a kind of magic.
In Charlie’s words:
In this residency I will be exploring and questioning the connections, gaps and crossovers between the material of a dance and the audience’s changing perception of that material, through the filter of language.
I’m interested in the transformative power of titles - words that attach to a dance much like a frame attaches to a picture - producing divergent ways of seeing the same dance. How does language infiltrate perception, so that the same movement “lands” in different ways with different titles, like so many spells or incantations cast by the audience’s thinking as it meets a dance again and again, anew?
On the last day of the residency there will be an open studio, an open invitation to audiences to come and explore this work with me. I imagine creating an installation, or durational performance, where I perform the same set dance many times, with many titles made available for watching with.
There will also be an invitation for audience members to create their own titles, generating a pool of ways-of-seeing, perhaps more than could ever be tried out. While the dance at hand remains relatively steady, altered only by its real-time repetition (and the energy that that requires), language, meaning and perception spiral out beyond the nameable or identifiable, conjuring up infinite possible dances to come.
This relaxed open studio event is open to everyone who would like to come.
No experience of watching dance is required.
You can book a free place on Eventbrite here
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Charlie Ashwell is a dancer, scholar and dramaturg, based in London. Over the last 17 years she has performed in experimental work by choreographers such as Seke Chimutengwende, Florence Peake, and Dog Kennel Hill Project, as well as making her own performances which propose dance practices as forms of magic. Charlie is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Sussex, alongside teaching choreography at the University of Roehampton and working as dramaturg with Seke Chimutengwende and theatre maker Greg Wohead.
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Leaf Hall Community Arts Centre is in the Seaside area of Eastbourne. Originally a working men's institute created for fishermen, it was built in 1861, designed by architect Robert Knott Blessley in Continental Gothic style and financed by the philanthropist William Leaf. Emerging out of a pursuit to inspire and support the community, and a desire for actions to speak louder than words, Leaf Hall is driven by progressive ideas, bold actions, and a strong foundation of support.
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This residency is part of LIVE EDITIONS, a new programme of movement, sound and performance in Eastbourne and the South Downs, supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and running from July 2026 to May 2027. We acknowledge generous in-kind support for this residency from Devonshire Collective and Leaf Hall Community Arts Centre.
LIVE EDITIONS is led by Nikki Tomlinson, an independent curator and producer.
For more about the background to the development of this programme, see here
Leaf Hall Community Arts Centre, Eastbourne