Carolyn Roy is a London-based, freelance dancer, writer and teacher. As a practitioner channelling the somatic processes and understanding we use as dancers through dance and other art forms, her body of presented/published work includes poetic and critical texts, sound narratives, film and photographic projects as well as live performances and political actions. Recent work has focused on examining philosophical concepts and social issues through the materiality of bodies. Performance and text projects (2018–) explore what it is to be with others in this world, what it is to be-with as dancers, the politics (and pleasure) of dancing, with reference to Jean-Luc Nancy’s Being Singuler Plural and Anne Dufourmantelle’s The Power of Gentleness. Currently, prompted by her unilateral hearing loss, she is researching and developing a collective listening project, working with open wave radio and attuned bodies for machinaloci space, London.
Training in contemporary dance forms, including release-based and somatically informed dance, Body Weather Work and Skinner Releasing Technique, was through Independent Dance, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, Washington State University and Maijuku. She has a PhD in dance, an MA in Creative Practice, and a BA Hons in Art History, has presented papers and performances at several academic conferences, most recently Field Studies at Luca Art School, Ghent, and published articles in the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices and the Journal of Theatre, Dance & Performance Training. Her text Eclipse: translating between philosophy and dance will be published in Multimodality and the Arts: Creative and Performative Processes as Intersemiotic Translation in August 2026.
Carolyn Roy has been part of the independent dance sector in London for over 30 years – as an improvisor, choreographer, collaborator, writer and teacher – showing her work in theatres and galleries in the UK, Japan and Europe. Alongside, she has collaborated with a range of choreographers and artists including Gaby Agis, Marina Collard, Vivienne Dick, Sarah Dobai, Kiera Greene, Florence Peake, Tino Sehgal and Rajni Shah. Her primary interest now is in situated and relational practice and process, moving between public performance, small scale interventions and collective experiments in workshop and residency settings. Commissions and events in 2025 included, in London, The Power of Gentleness, Chisenhale Dance Space and Siobhan Davies Studios, Interval and Touching Words, Chisenhale Dance Space, Why speak of a Rose in Winter, the Wash Houses, Bête Noire cabaret, The Blue Posts, Towards; proximity and distance, the South Downs, Eclipse,Luca School of Art, Ghent.
Since 2023 she has been a member of Musarc (https:// www.musarc.org/about/) performing as a vocalist in work by Keiji Heino, Jennifer Walshe, Ed Atkins, Lin Chiwei and Heleen Van Haegenborgh amongst others, as well as writing the libretto for Into the Garden of Chimerical Delights, performed at the Fashion in Film Festival at the Barbican Centre.
She is a part time lecturer at Trinity Laban and The Place and teaches regularly at Independent Dance as well as classes and workshops for non-professional adults. Previous teaching posts have been at The Architectural Association, the Bartlett School of Architecture, and Lincoln University.