ACI Research

Professor Sarahleigh Castelyn is Reader at the University of East London and a performer, choreographer, and researcher: a dance nerd. She is a practice researcher who focuses on dance and performance practices that are often marginalised by the global north. Sarahleigh has performed in, and choreographed works, for example at JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Festival (the longest-running dance festival in South Africa and the African continent) and the National Arts Festival (held in Makhanda in South Africa and the longest-running arts festival in South Africa and the African continent)).  She has been published in Viral Dramaturgies (2018), Narratives in Black British Dance (2018), African Performance Review, Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies, Animated, and the South African Theatre Journal. Sarahleigh sits on the steering committee of JOMBA! MASIHAMBISANE, and on editorial boards such as Research in Dance Education and the South African Dance Journal. k. She served on the Editorial Board of One Dance UK’s HOTFOOT magazine which focused on Dance of the Africa Diaspora. Her latest book Contemporary Dance in South Africa: The Toyi-Toying Body combines practice research with textual analysis to explore political and social meanings in South Africa and contemporary dance post-Apartheid. She is actively involved in the African Dance Disability Network, and this drives her latest practice research project that explores the representation of madness in dance calling out stereotypes and stigma around mental illness in society.