
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.
I am Ella, director of Ela Mesma Company. I am inspired to make work that undoes limiting beliefs and celebrates diverse cultural and social identities on this incredible planet.
The company strive to empower and inspire our audiences to come back HOME to themselves (a bit like our company name: Ela/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, and honouring and paying my respects to these styles is really important to me.
I would like to thank The Place (where Me & Akeim Toussaint are Choreodrome artist 2023) Kala Sangam, Yorkshire Dance, Open Source Arts, Dance City, Pavillion Dance South West, (where I was a 2020 Supported Artist). Thanks also to Open Source Arts, where I am an Associate Artist, The Geraldine Connor Foundation, where I am an Associate and to the Arts Council England for their continued public funding support.
Values and kindness are also at the heart of the company ethos as well as equality, self love & wellbeing and balance.