Referred to as the ‘dancing bass meister’, by Barre Philipps, David Leahy has dedicated the last 20 years to navigating the area between music and dance. Originally from New Zealand, David works as an improvising double bass player, contact-improvising dancer, composer, educator, and researcher. He is a prominent member of the London free improvised music scene and is a long-standing member of the London Improvisers Orchestra, as well as various other improvisation ensembles across Europe.

David's PhD, Musicians in Space (2020), explores what happens when the performance of free improvisation expands outwards into space, so as to remove the physical separation between the performer and the audience. David works as both a lecturer and dance musician in the dance faculty of Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, in London. For further information, please go to www.dafmusic.com.

Helena Massip is a dedicated instrumental teacher fascinated with movement and enjoys exploring cross-disciplinary improvisation. She regularly collaborates with other artists in theatre and music performances, dance workshops and recording sessions.

Since 2015 Helena performed with the London-based improvisational theatre company Zootrophic, in shows such as ‘A hundred years after Brexit’ or ‘Siberia 2121’. She has also been a solo live music performer for movement and dance improvisation workshops over the last five years. In 2016 her increasing curiosity in somatics took Helena to embark on professional training as a Feldenkrais practitioner in London.

Helena's music is experimental, combining acoustic viola improvisation and voice, looping layers using her instrument and various effects to create a palette of atmospheres and soundscapes.

I use a varied palette of timbres and dynamics to support and inspire movement. I play many different instruments and have studied in Indian, Western, and African classical traditions as well in free improvisation and experimental contexts. I've worked for over thirty years in film, theatre and live art as a composer and performer, and as a jazz and rock musician. I draw on this wide range of experience to conjure all sorts of flavours and resonances. I am also steeped in the Deep Listening practice of Pauline Oliveros. My foundational discipline is vipassana meditation which has silence at its core.

I have an international practice incorporating and often hybridizing music, film, live art, installation, architecture, writing and theatre. I’ve played in a huge variety of contexts from free jazz to Indian Classical music, from bubble-gum pop to industrial noise. I’ve been commissioned by the Sonic Arts Network, National Theatre, Royal Ballet, English National Opera, and Guangdong Modern Dance Company. I’ve been Musical Director at Shakespeare’s Globe and percussionist with The Specials, Nitin Sawhney, Bjork, Oasis, Cornershop, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic, and many others. My first love is the intimate immediacy of a Contact Jam.

Improvisation, incorporating elements of jazz, blues, psychedelia and various world folk traditions into a free-flowing soup of sound, occasionally venturing into chaotic free-form experimentation.

I play a variety of hand percussion, specialising in frame drums and darbuka. I also play piano, guitar, oud (fretless Arabic lute) and pipes and whistles from various traditions. I currently gig with Chai for All (Swing/Klezmer) and Hazir (Middle Eastern music) as well as improvising for CI jams in Bristol and beyond.

I've been dancing and helping to organise CI events in Bristol for the past 10 years. I work as a music therapist for MusicSpace, a Bristol-based music therapy charity. I am especially interested in the ways we can connect, communicate and express ourselves through collective improvisation in music and other mediums.