A varied start to 2026 has seen us delivering career development workshops for dancers at South East Dance, Rambert and English National Ballet, alongside finalising some valuable partnership initiatives and recruiting for key fundraising and general management roles within our small but impactful charity.

This newsletter contains opportunities for dancers including upcoming Retraining Grant deadlines, a free workshop, a scholarship to take part in an MBA and a grant opportunity for dancers who’ve worked internationally. Please take a look and share the opportunities with dancers in your network who may be interested.

During January, we enjoyed meeting independent dancers living and working in Brighton, through an invitation to take part in an event at South East Dance, ensuring that they and their community know to contact DCD when they need us.

Looking forwards, we’re delighted to be partnering with One Dance UK this summer to deliver a day of workshops focused on dancers’ health & wellbeing, presented by People Dancing. Tickets have just been released, so take a look, we will be telling you more about this in our next newsletter.

With warm regards

Vanessa Lefrancois, Executive Director

DCD’s Retraining Grants can help support dancers with the practical costs of developing and progressing their career, whether within or beyond the arts. Grants can be used towards a range of costs related to retraining, from course and training fees, to equipment, maintenance, travel and childcare costs.

Upcoming application deadlines:
Monday 1 June
Monday 7 September

Anyone considering submitting an application must book an Individual Career Consultation with a DCD Relationship Manager at least two weeks prior to the application deadline.

We are delighted to welcome Gemma to the DCD team. Providing temporary cover to our Relationship Management team, Gemma will be conducting Individual Career Consultations with dancers, and supporting the delivery of DCD programmes and services, bringing her skills and experience to empower artists in building sustainable careers at every stage of their development.

Over a 20+ year career, Gemma has worked as a professional dancer, choreographer, rehearsal director, teacher, mentor and coach, including with Rambert, The Royal Ballet, Scottish Dance Theatre and Company Chameleon. She is a founding member of New Movement Collective and has delivered coaching sessions for Northern School of Contemporary Dance, London Contemporary Dance School, University of Salford, Lowry CAT teams and independent dance artists across the North West.

Gavin is a freelance dancer, movement artist and technical practitioner with 20+ years’ professional experience.

Beginning in Breaking, his extensive performance career spans musical theatre, circus, opera, film and large-scale international productions, including work with ZooNation, Southpaw, Avant Garde, Elekron at Studio City Macau, Netflix’s The Crown, Sony, GQ and the MOBO Awards. 

Alongside performance, Gavin has increasingly worked in hybrid artistic and technical roles, collaborating extensively with Gorilla Circus and Wired Aerial Theatre as a rigging technician, show climber, movement director and stunt performer. This experience highlighted a viable career pathway that would retain his movement expertise. 

A Retraining Grant from DCD supported the costs of Gavin’s training in professional rigging, rope access and aerial theatre effects, funding IRATA-accredited rope access training, specialist rigging education and essential safety equipment. This addressed a key barrier he faced after his initial training: the inability to accept larger or more complex contracts due to equipment and qualification limitations. 

As a direct outcome of this support, Gavin has secured work with a circus company as a rigging technician, a contract that arose directly from his enhanced training capacity and industry readiness. As a result, Gavin has diversified his income and developed a sustainable career that spans the performing arts, film and television, and related technical sectors. 

“DCD's support has been vital for me being able to afford the upfront training and equipment costs needed to start working in the rope access and rigging industry. Being able to take out time from dance work and really dedicate time to the training, wouldn't have been possible without it.” 

Gavin’s grant was made possible by DCD’s successful application to the Theatre Development Trust. We are immensely grateful to them for supporting our work, changing dancers’ lives.

Please send us any feedback you have on our newsletter, so that we can make sure future editions are relevant, informative and interesting. Also, do keep in touch with us on social media, your support in sharing our posts with your network is hugely appreciated.

DCD is ambitious for dancers' futures.