Rosie Kay

Rosie Kay (born 27 March 1976) is a British choreographer best known for her show 5 Soldiers, MK ULTRA (produced in collaboration with Adam Curtis) Kay is the founder and former artistic director of Rosie Kay Dance Company, Associate Artist at Dance City, and a research associate to the University of Oxford School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography.

Early life Rosie Kay, born in Scotland and brought up in Devon, began dance classes at the age of three. She trained at London Contemporary Dance School, graduating in 1998.

Career Rosie Kay first worked as a dancer outside of the UK before founding Rosie Kay Dance Company in 2004. Performed by Kay and Miotto, Sluts of Possession featured at Dance Base at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, honing in on trance-like states and tribal ritual.

In 2014 producer James Preston joined Rosie Kay Dance Company as executive director, with the pair first meeting at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe whilst Kay was performing her piece The Wild Party in 2006.

In 2015, Rosie Kay's production 5 Soldiers received a Special Commendation from the Royal Society of Public Health's Arts and Health Awards and was nominated for Best Choreography at the National Dance Awards in 2015 whilst the company won Best Independent Dance Company. The show also garnered considerable critical praise, attaining 5 stars in The Scotsman, The Herald, the Observer, the Independent, and 4 stars in The Guardian, and was included in the Best Dance Charts 2015 for the latter three publications. In 2017, it returned to Edinburgh Festival Fringe with a sell-out run presented by Summerhall’s Army@TheFringe and was awarded a Summerhall Jawbone Award for ‘Greatest Festival Moments 2017’. A digital commission from The Space in 2017 enabled a live stream of the show from an Army base in London presented by Sadler's Wells on BBC Arts Online. the final part of a trilogy beginning with 5 Soldiers (on war) and There Is Hope (on religion). In it, Kay explores themes of surveillance, propaganda, and "total war". The choreography was put together in ten days and was televised live to an estimated one billion people globally, in a performance that also included the longest ever single-camera shot of a live handover. The performance featured Birmingham Royal Ballet's principal dancer Céline Gittens and blended ballet, street, jazz and contemporary dance. Approximately 1,500 volunteers auditioned to take part with 500–600 participating in the live show.

Kay is associate director and choreographer for a large-scale adaptation of Woyzeck, with a community cast of 100+ at Birmingham Repertory Theatre as part of Birmingham International Dance Festival 2018. Rosie Kay Dance Company following an investigation after claims were made by her dancers regarding Kay's views on gender & biological sex. The Times reads... Kay asked them to define non-binary. At that she says several male dancers shouted that she was a bigot and a terf. Kay said that she supported single-sex spaces, especially because in 2019 in a dance studio’s gender-neutral changing rooms she saw “women and girls getting undressed and in the middle a young man dancing about with his penis out. I was too shocked to complain".In July 2022, Kay launched the K2CO dance company. Company members will sign a commitment to freedom of expression, the Charter of Creation, that the workplace will be "a safe space where we are free to express our thoughts and feelings without fear of being silenced, shut down or cancelled". Artist Jess de Wahls and Jan Teo, past head of the Birmingham Royal Ballet, will sit on the board. When recovering from an operation and still feeling the effects of general anaesthetic, she had a vivid dream which inspired the creation of 5 Soldiers: The Body is the Frontline, a piece that tells the story of servicemen and women in the British Army. Recalling the dream, she told The Daily Record:“I dreamt my leg had been blown off on a desert battlefield. In the dream, my first thought was, ‘Oh s**t’. My second thought was, ‘My body is not my soul, I can chop off my arms and legs and I’d still be me’. I thought, ‘What are the links between dance training and soldiers’ training? Could I understand the way they use their bodies? Could I step into that? How would it feel to change my body in that way? What happens in your mind to take those risks?" At these army rehab centres, Kay spoke with soldiers who had returned from Afghanistan with complex trauma injuries and multiple amputations. In this diverse city, young people’s family loyalties give way to gang allegiance as teenagers play with adult rules. A party in the park gets out of control sparking rumours, rioting and revenge. In the midst of rivalries, first tastes of freedom and sparks of a full-on first love ignite. Two young lovers are led to their tragic deaths by events they can’t control."

Personal life Kay is the daughter of Stefan G. Kay OBE and Helen Kay. She has a son, Gabriel and lives in Northfield, Birmingham, with her film-maker husband Louis Price. Kay, who says she was raped at 16 by a school friend, says she is gender non-conforming, but that "as a dancer, you live in your body. You are under no illusion about your sex. During periods, you injure more easily. When you ovulate, you're wobbly." The complainants also claimed Kay had said that being non-binary is "insane." Kay denies having said this, but acknowledges that she did say, and does believe, that "there is no such sex as non-binary." In response to the complaints made to Rosie Kay Dance Company's board of trustees, the board wrote to the Arts Council and the Charity Commission, telling them that Kay was under investigation for transphobia. The board demanded that Kay be investigated by an external HR consultant, but Kay refused to submit to any investigation "which does not acknowledge my gender-critical beliefs are protected under law." Kay denies these allegations, saying that the only talk about "eunuchs" was a reference to Germaine Greer's feminist text The Female Eunuch, and that she was not transphobic, saying that "the presence of males who may falsely say they are transwomen in female toilets can cause trauma to women who have suffered sexual assault, as a significant number of women have."

Kay said she experienced depression after losing her company, but was encouraged by the support of the author J. K. Rowling, who tweeted: "Rosie, you proved you were ready to lose everything in this fight and I couldn’t admire you more." Award from The Queen as ‘Young Achiever of Scotland’. Research Associate, University of Oxford, with papers published in Medical Humanities and a book chapter published by Oxford University Press on ‘War and Choreography’.

List of major works

Asylum (2004) The Wild Party (2006) Ballet on the Buses (2007) Double Points: K (2008) in collaboration with Emio Greco | PC. Supernova (2008) 5 SOLDIERS – The Body Is The Frontline (2010–2017) The Great Train Dance (2011) on the Severn Valley Railway There is Hope (2012) Haining Dreaming (2013) Sluts of Possession (2013) MOTEL (2016) in collaboration with Huntley Muir MK ULTRA (2016–2018) Modern Warrior (2017–18) Choreography of Commonwealth Games handover (2018) Artemis Clown (2018–19) 10 Soldiers (2019) Absolute Solo II (2021) Romeo + Juliet (2021)

Feature Film credits include choreographer for Sunshine on Leith (2013) and Brummoves (2014). 5 SOLDIERS – the film, was exhibited at The Herbert Gallery Coventry, Stadtmuseum Dresden and is in the film collection of la Médiathèque du Centre National de la Danse, Paris.