Jane Castree
Dance Artist
You have recently created new works for the summer exhibition ‘Movements to stay alive’ at Modern Art Oxford. What’s your background as a dance artist?
I trained as a dancer at the London Contemporary Dance School, which offers highly technical and skilled dance training. After graduating, I pursued an MA in Choreography at the Dartington College of the Arts, which provides a more avant-garde environment. There, students from different creative disciplines attend joint sessions in addition to those in their subject. It was essential for me to train in these two distinct environments, such as LCDS and Dartington, because I wanted to develop a practice that combines depth of research with connections to audiences on multiple levels.
How does your work connect with art spaces?
I’m keen on cross-disciplinary work and on exploring where different art forms meet. In terms of art spaces, I did projects in art galleries, which meant performing in the gallery in front of an artist’s work. Instead, Modern Art Oxford offered me the opportunity to create my own work for their exhibition, which was exciting for me. Initially, I researched how to encourage people to move within an art space and to think about moving their bodies in different ways, without myself being present to support them. Then I wanted to invite and help the visitors to move in many ways as I would do if I were present, and added elements of design, like symbols and objects, to facilitate that.
What are the themes that you explore in your work?
For the 2025 summer exhibition ‘Movements to stay alive’ at Modern Art Oxford, my work examined the body from different perspectives. I began experimenting with film, as it allows for viewing the movements from a variety of angles while providing a safer kind of relationship with the audience. It was fascinating to observe how the body looks entirely different when making shifts. For example, in ballet, everything is designed from a particular angle to make the feet appear beautiful and elegant, with a distinct line, but for one of my projects, I watched them from the angle of the underside of the feet, and it showed a different narrative. In other projects, I work with community groups to create cohesion, like in an area on the outskirts of Oxford. The participants come together because they are in a similar age group and they live in the same neighbourhood, but they have different lives and very different viewpoints, which require many facilitation skills for working with the group dynamics. Some days, I might set for them an improvisational task, such as making basic movements like circles, and this physical work enables a variety of people to be in a space together. During the physical work, it happens that people change their perspective about what they can do and what they can't do, which is self-reflective and helps them and everyone else in the space. Despite the different opinions about how to do things in the space, it helps to look at them from a different perspective to create cohesion. There's a respected space where we can listen to others and be part of, even if everybody doesn't agree with each other.
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