Marina is one of the founder members of the Kentish Town,  Musical Moving Dance for people with Parkinson’s group, together with Dr. Marion North and musician Anna Gillespie. Originally she trained as a dancer at the Laban Centre, where she developed her work in Laban Studies and choreography. Later, Marina trained as a Dance Movement Psychotherapist at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she now lectures in movement observation and improvisation. She is currently continuing her professional development by training in Integrative Bodywork and Somatic Therapy, as well as furthering her studies in the Kestenberg Movement Profile (KMP) and Movement Psychodiagnostic Inventory (MPI).

Marina’s practice as a Dance Movement Psychotherapist involves working with children with special needs and adults with mental health issues.

Joanne graduated from Canada's National Ballet School,Teacher Training Course. She later completed an MA at the Laban Centre in London. Joanne has taught ballet internationally in both recreational and professional schools. She has worked extensively in dance education to devise and deliver projects that enabled people of all ages and abilities to access classical ballet and participate in the work of professional dance companies. She was Head of Education for English National Ballet and has worked freelance as an education consultant for various organisations including The Royal Ballet School and The Royal Opera House.

Joanne joined the Kentish Town Dance for Parkinson’s class as a teacher in January 2009, motivated and inspired by attendance at workshops with the Mark Morris Dance Group in London and New York. Since then she has worked to develop new classes to promote the joy of dance to people living with Parkinson’s.  She now teaches with Anna Gillespie in Edgware, Kentish Town, Hampton and Wimbledon.  Joanne is a founder member of the Dance for Parkinson's Network UK which support the growth of classes around the UK.

Anna is one of the founder members of the Kentish Town, Musical Moving Dance for people with Parkinson’s group, together with Dr Marion North and Marina Benini. She trained in both music and dance and graduated with a BA (Hons) from the Laban Centre. Anna has worked as a dancer, composer and musician for various contemporary dance companies. She has also devised and taught “music for dance” courses at the Royal Academy of Dance and Roehampton University. Anna regularly accompanies professional dance classes including the Richard Alston Dance Company and education projects with The Royal Opera House and The Royal Ballet School.

In recent years Anna has concentrated particularly on how music can facilitate, stimulate and encourage movement potential. As a dancer herself, she focuses on the intention behind movement and the movement experience in order to make musical decisions for supporting dance.
Anna also plays piano with Sexteto Cafe, a salsa band from Colombia.

Amanda Fogg is a dance and movement practitioner working primarily with older people and those with Parkinson's. She is a founder member of the recently formed Dance for Parkinson's Network UK. In 2011 she was awarded an Arts Council grant to deliver Innate, a 12 month project exploring the ways in which live music may help to initiate movement and “flow” and facilitate artistic and creative responses in class participants who have Parkinson's. After a performing career and many years running a ballet school in Dorset, Amanda's work evolved into the wider community dance field and for more than 12 years she has been running classes and workshops in Dorset and Somerset. In 2001 she was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship Travel Bursary to visit various dance and older people's projects in America and in 2007 she received an Arts Council Grant to visit the Dance for Parkinson's outreach classes run by the Mark Morris Dance Group in New York. She has been running classes for people with Parkinson's for over ten years and has been invited to run training sessions for practitioners regionally and nationally, including for the UK Foundation of Community Dance. In 2010 Amanda co-taught dance workshops with Musical Moving at the World Parkinson's Congress in Glasgow. She is currently a member of the Advisory Board for Life Circles, a dance project taking place across three counties in the south west and is the choreographer for adult participants in Landance 2012, an outdoor site specific combined arts project on Eggardon Hill in Dorset.  

Other Guest Teachers:

Lauren Potter

Lucy Stern 

Trustees:

Ginny Brown, Chair

Faiz Nizar, Treasurer

Pippa Cobbing, Secretary

Toby Beazley

Volunteers:

Kathy Hughes

Gundhild Lenz-Mulligan

Jan Woolbar