Biography

Maisie Whitehead is a dancer, physical performer, choreographer, aerialist and yoga teacher based in London. She graduated from Laban with a BA (hons) Dance Theatre in 2005. She has danced and performed with projects, companies and choreographers including La Mi La Dance Projects (Italy), Athena Vahla, Foot in Hand, RPM Dance Theatre, Winter Walker, Laura and Lauren, award winning choreographer Zoi Dimitriou (UK and Greece), DecoDance, Austrian choreographer Willi Dorner, internationally renowned children’s theatre company, Theatre Hullabaloo, poet Michael Rosen and The HomeMade Orchestra’s ‘Centrally Heated Knickers’, Aircraft Circus and Circus Suburbia. She has also choreographed and performed her own work, and has taught creative dance workshops and contemporary technique to all ages. Maisie has trained in puppetry and object manipulation and in a broad range of circus and aerial skills and completed a Foundation in Circus Arts with Aircraft Circus in 2011. She also sings and plays the Ukulele.

As a choreographer, Maisie created several works for her own company, Ubend, between 2005-2007, in collaboration with artists from a variety of disciplines including composer / musicians Tim Whitehead and Wayne Walker Allen, film maker Kier Williams, theatre makers Angus McKenzie-Davies and Gemma Powell, and Dancers Dan Baird and Sara Lindstrom. In 2009 she created ‘Dancing in The Sky’, a flash-mob style performance created to new music by Tim Whitehead and performed at Tate Britain. In 2011-12 Maisie begun explorations in puppetry and object manipulation and aerial performance, creating ‘esortiaw’ (a ballet performed by an assortment of plastic bags to the infamous ‘Blue Danube’), ‘Bettie Budgie’ (a solo comic aerial hoop and rope act telling the fated tale of fluffy yellow caged bird who dreams of Vegas), and ‘In to Dreamland’ (a solo aerial rope act to music by singer/songwriter Hattie Whitehead). Maisie’s latest project ‘Strung Out’, a surreal adventure in aerial dance theatre, premiered at The Place as part of Resolution! 2014 (see separate page for details).

Maisie completed her 200hr yoga teacher training at Kranti Yoga in Goa, India, specialising in Ashtanga and Vinyasa Flow. She teaches group and one to one classes in London.

Portrait by Rachel Ferriman