Ella Mesma Company

A Dance & Circus Theatre Company

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BECAUSE THE EARTH WITHOUT ART IS JUST EH!

We create magic experiences using a diverse range of folkloric dance styles & aerial silks to bring the stories that we would love to have seen growing up to life.

Ella Mesma Company is a British based dance theatre company drawing upon a diverse range of folkloric dance styles to create highly-skilled theatre. Much of the company’s inspiration is borne out of the Company Director’s diverse training in Afro-Latin, Breaking and Contemporary dance, as well as the diverse skills that each individual company member brings to Ella Mesma Company.

Our goal is to make work that undoes limiting beliefs and celebrates diverse cultural and social identities on this incredible planet. Values and kindness are also at the heart of the company ethos as well as equality, self love & wellbeing and balance.

We strive to create beautiful, inspiring diaspora dance theatre to allow transformation through the honouring of our values and the telling of personal and global stories. This supports us to connect to our truest selves and to create powerful, personal and political work that also is in resonance with Mother Earth works in harmony with the planet. Where possible we try to use recycled materials and minimise our carbon footprint.

We would like to thank The Place (where Akeim Toussaint & Ella are Choreodrome artists 2023/2024) Kala Sangam, Yorkshire Dance, Open Source Arts (where Ella is an Associate Artist 2024), Dance City, Pavillion Dance South West, (where Ella was a 2020 Supported Artist). Thanks also to The Geraldine Connor Foundation, where I am an Associate and to the Arts Council England for their continued public funding support.

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

Ella is also a coach, mentor and director of Maya Gandaia Ltd: a company with a mission to support creatives to overcome and unlearn the stories and experiences getting in the way of their thriving and growth (Check it out HERE). 

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About Us

“Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain.” Martha Graham

I am Ella, director of Ella Mesma Company and am inspired to to empower and inspire performances and audiences to come back HOME to themselves (a bit like our company name: Ela/Ella/Ele/Elu means she/he/they & Mesma means real/really).

I am passionate about our audiences feeling connected and seen through our work and I love to create opportunities to participate and interact. 

I refer to the work we make as diaspora dance theatre in recognition of the African roots of all folkloric dance styles, from Hip Hop to Rumba. I know that we are also making a new journey (just as these dances did), taking influence from the past and making sense of this in our lives and our art today. I acknowledge the painful history of colonialism and enslaved people that has led to the creation of these diasporic dances and commit to honouring and respecting them and their history, also acknowledging all the unrecognised cultural lineages and stories that are untold.

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

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ELLA MESMA COMPANY

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