Ella Mesma Company

Testimonials

Unabashedly emotional

Amazing, powerful energy in abundance

She really pushes the form beyond battles and bravado

Ella Mesma has a holistic approach to creativity, creating from a space of connectivity to self and purpose

Carrying that vital spark of originality

The students really enjoyed both workshop and performance and found it interesting and inspiring

Ladylike should be compulsory watching for the world

F***ing brilliant. Very moving

An absurd, comical, and emotionally charged ritual of dance theatre

Totally swept away by the powerful performances of the four women! They do represent a diaspora of desires, fears and heroism

The MMMM classes were an absolute tonic during lockdown and beyond

It has improved my basic technique and gotten me back into dancing and feeling rhythms again and moving in a way that works for me.

I love the openness of the class as well as the structured exercises that we add our own flavour too. Looking forward to more!

About Ella Mesma

“Thanks for visiting our site! I am Ella of Ella Mesma Company. We are inspired to make work that undoes limiting beliefs and celebrates cultural and social identity to empower and inspire our audiences: just like our company name. We love to include audience interaction in some form in our work. We refer to the work we make as diaspora dance theatre, because we recognise that the roots of these folkloric dance styles lie in Africa, and that we are also making a new journey, (just as these dances did): taking influence from the past and making sense of them today .”

Ella Mesma Company

About Us

Ella Mesma Company is a British based dance theatre company who use a diverse range of folkloric dance styles, inspired by director Ella’s background in Afro-Latin, Breaking and Contemporary dance, as well as the skills of each individual who has joined the company.

The company strive to use diaspora dance theatre (a term they created to communicate this unique meeting of dance styles) to allow transformation: telling personal and global stories to connect to our truest selves, and create powerful, personal and political work.

“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” ~ Toni Morrison.

Ella, of mixed heritage, began dancing Salsa aged 14 and much later (age 25) studied Contemporary dance and trained in Breaking. Ella’s incentive is to make accesible dance work with BIPOC womxn, LGBTQI+ people as the central characters and using the dance styles she has always loved.

*womxn: we are using this alternative spelling to avoid suggestions of sexism perceived in the sequence of m-a-n and m-e-n, and to be inclusive of trans and non binary women.

Ella Mesma Company also teach workshops and work with young people to create dance projects in the community.

Thank you to Pavillion Dance South West, where Ella is Artist in Residence, to Geraldine Connor Foundation where Ella is an Associate Artist and to Arts Council England for continued support through public funding.