Growing up mixed race black and English in the North East, hip hop and street culture has constantly been a source of inspiration and identity throughout his work from the robot, popping, breaking, hip hop and UK Jazz dance where he first began performing with his crew Bamboozle. He trained at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance gaining a BA. After leaving he became an apprentice at Phoenix Dance. Robert’s stage work as a soloist and with his own company choreography has toured relentlessly in the UK and internationally, supported by Arts Council England, Southbank, Laban and The British Council. Robert has been commissioned by Croatian Institute for Music and Dance Festival for Do paintings walk. Co-director for Demon Juice opera, an education project at The Royal Opera House with East London Dance. Choreographed a curtain raiser for the National Song & Dance Company Mozambique supported by British Council. As well as choreographing and making the music for Human Revolution a pas de deux commissioned by Ballet Black. Teaching credits include core popping teacher for Swindon Dance CAT Scheme, Process Festival hip hop theatre Intensive, produced by Benji Reid and National Taiwan University of Arts Taipei along with varying mentoring roles over several years. His dance film credits include Jaffaman, Two Sugars, and his directorial debut Fresh commissioned by ACE, Channel 4 & ABC Australia as well as directing a short film for Black Dance Archive Project commissioned State of Trust. Commercially Robert has choreographed for Netflix, Louis Vuitton, IKEA, McDonalds, Footlocker, Florette, Coors, Nescafe, Kellogg’s and Tetley’s.

 

Robert has worked as a dance consultant on projects with BBC iWonder - From Juba to krumping: The development of street dance and for Channel 4, Street Sound and Style: Episode 2. In 2015 Robert presented his paper Urban Street meets Contemporary Dance as part of Blurring Boundaries produced by Serendipity at Du Montfort University. Credited as a 1st generation UK hip hop theatre practitioner, formerly an Associate Artist at The Place. Robert gained an MA in Performance Arts at Northampton University in 2013. He is a Visiting Fellow at The Eccles Centre, British Library and an Associate Research Fellow in the School of The Arts, Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre. Focusing on otherness, migration, hip hop and its relationship to African diaspora performance and speculative future. Robert is currently working on a book commissioned by the British Library based on a selection of their dance archive images to be published in 2021.

 

International work:

Australia, New Zealand, Bangkok, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Taiwan, Belgium, Copenhagen, Cyprus, Holland, Italy, USA, Mozambique, South Africa, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Spain, Croatia, Cuba, Uzbekistan, Libya, Algeria, Slovenia, Israel, Morocco, Romania, Lebanon.

 

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