Team

Jorge Crecis. Founder director

A choreographer with a PhD. An athlete’s mind in a dancer’s body

Author of the book: Designing Presence: Entering Towards Vivencia, together with Bridget Lappin.

Featured in the book: Fifty Contemporary Choreographers (3rd edition). Edited By Jo Butterworth and Lorna Sanders

Jorge’s work is renowned for merging the athleticism and excitement of sports with the compelling visuals of an art installation. He is passionate about showing off the dancers as resiliently virtuosic individuals that together forms a strong and compact team.

Jorge holds a degree in Sport Sciences and studied contemporary dance at the Royal Conservatory of Madrid. After working as a professional dancer for different companies throughout Europe, he became a full-time lecturer at London Contemporary Dance School (The Place) for four years. Currently, Jorge is an award winning choreographer whose work has been performed in the main theatres around the world: from the prestigious New York City Centre (USA), to the avant-garde 798 District in Beijing (China) or Sadlers Wells and the Royal Opera House in London (UK). Following this motto and based upon his synthesis of sport and dance movement patterns, Jorge founded SQx (somoSQuien eXperience) leading workshops internationally and coaching professional companies such as Akram Khan Company, DV8, Punchdrunk, Rambert, etc.

Over the last years Jorge has been commissioned by companies such as: Scottish Dance Theatre (UK), Beijing 9 Contemporary Dance Theatre (China), Acosta Danza (Cuba), among others. His work has been described as: “irrepressible good fun” (The Guardian), “perfect” (The Independent) or “a Sudoku brought to life” (Londondance.com). His latest creation for the company directed by Carlos Acosta has been awarded as the best dance piece presented in Cuba in 2017.

In 2014 Jorge co-founded min tala, a Pan-Arab dance company that uses contemporary dance as a peacekeeping, personal and professional development tool in areas of conflict in the middle East. He also served as Artistic Director for Aerowaves Festival in Burgos in 2011.

In 2018, he obtained his PhD degree by Goldsmiths University of London. For the last 20 years, Jorge has been working to crack the secret of how to replicate altered states of consciousness using neurosciences, anthropology and phenomenology. The result is a cutting-edge methodology that he shares through workshop and a one of a kind online training: Towards Vivencia.

Due to his outstanding work in dance research, he has been appointed as a Visiting Fellow at the University of Derby. Jorge also applies this research to music and film personalities.

Bridget Lappin. Assistant Director

Bridget Lappin is the Assistant Director of Towards Vivencia. Originally from the east coast of Canada, she is currently based in London, UK, where she works as a freelance dancer and actor. She has performed with Richard Alston Dance Company, Bern Ballett (under the direction of Cathy Marston), Humanah Productions, Peut-Être Theatre, Glyndebourne Opera Festival (UK) and several independent choreographers in both Canada and the UK.

She has presented her own choreographic work as a solo artist in several international platforms, including Tanz Made in Bern, Kinetic Studio, and the Place.

As a teacher, she has taught for London Contemporary Dance School, TripSpace ProDance, Glydnebourne Opera, Chisenhale Dance Space & Kinetic Studio and has been the Contemporary Dance Faculty for Ross Creek Centre for the Arts Summer Arts programme since 2016.

Bridget was part of the very first edition of Towards Vivencia online training and was one of the first Big Siblings, offering support to participants throughout their training. As Assistant Director, she has been involved in the mentoring of each edition of Designing Presence Training since and has played an integral role in the development of Towards Vivencia as a company.

Bridget is also the co-author of Designing Presence: Entering Towards Vivencia and is the official "voice" of TWV.

Find out more about Bridget here: https://www.bridgetlappin.com

Fanny Pouillot. Producer

Originally from France, Fanny graduated in 2018 from Ecole de Management de Normandie (Le Havre, France) with a MA degree in business and management, and from London Contemporary Dance School (London, UK) with a MA degree in performance. She previously trained at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance (Leeds, UK) and at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et Danse (Lyon, France), and graduated with a BA in Economics from Université Pierre Mendes France (Grenoble).

As a producer, she has been working with Toussaint to Move (Akeim Tousaint Buck), Wilhelmina Ojanen (Sadlers Wells Young Associate Artist) and co-organised a festival encouraging access to culture in rural areas called The Pink House Festival. As a dancer, she has performed with Matter of Fact dance (Erin Pollitt), Vivian Triantafyllopoulou, Ruby Portus Dance and Vanessa Grasse.

In 2018, she got involved as a producer in Towards Vivencia after meeting Jorge in the studio with Edge Dance company (The Place, London). She is also part of the 3rd edition of the training, finishing in March 2020.

Shannon Leypoldt. TWV Designing Presence Edition Manager

Shannon received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance Performance University of California, Irvine. She then trained at the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance under the direction of Summer Lee Rhatigan. In 2014 she became a member of wee dance company at the Gerhart-Hauptmann-Theater, Görlitz-Zittau. Shannon has performed with Staatsoper Berlin, KDV Dance Ensemble, Dorky Park, EYAS Dance Collective, burnsWORK, FACT/SF, Sharp & Fine, and Nine Shards Dance Theater Collective. Shannon has performed choreography by Shlomi Bitton, Hillel Cogen, Maxine Doyle, and Sommer Ulrickson. She has performed in Taiwan, Bosnia, Sweden, Israel, Russia, Poland, Germany, and the US.

While at UCIrvine, Shannon also studied Biology and participated in a four year Sports Medicine Internship. She is passionate about exploring the bridge between dance and science and how current research in neuroscience, physiology, and cognitive science can help us move, feel, and live better. Shannon was introduced to Jorge and his training methodology during her time at the Gerhart-Hauptmann-Theater. In 2018 she participated in the second edition of the Towards Vivencia training program.

Gloria Gül. TWV Designing Presence Edition Manager

Gloria Borge Lasarte is a young contemporary dance practitioner. She is originally from Asturias (Spain), and after couple of years abroad, first in Turkey and then in Malta, she is now back home. She started dancing ballet being a kid, and soon she also tried gymnastics, synchronized swimming and contemporary dance.

In 2012, she started her studies in Psychology at the University of Oviedo, but she interrupted them to pursue her degree in Dance Studies at the University of Malta. There, she had the opportunity to work with different choreographers like Jorge Crecis, Riccardo Buscarini, and Lucía Piquero. After graduating in 2019 with a Frist Class Degree, she has also worked with choreographers Francesca Tranter, Zoe Camillieri, and Gil Kerer. Recently, she has also been involved in dance research projects like E2M with Jorge Crecis and Lucía Piquero. At the moment, after few months in an apprenticeship with OtraDanza (Alicante), she works as a freelancer and she has choreographed and performed her solo STILL POINT, created within the context of Towards Vivencia.

Gloria joined Towards Vivencia 2nd Edition after meeting Jorge as a choreographer at the University of Malta. She had never heard about his training and methodology before, but after two intense weeks, she wanted to know and experience more of that work. TWV2 has meant for her a supportive community to keep on discovering and developing herself not only as a dancer, but specially as a dancer. It has been a learning journey that has guided and keeps on guiding her into the professional life after finishing her studies.

Vivian Triantafyllopoulou. TWV Designing Presence Edition Manager

Vivian Triantafyllopoulou comes from Greece and studied contemporary dance in Trinity Laban in London. She continued as a chosen member of the Akram Khan Experiment and then she joined Jasmin Vardimon 2 professional development course, where she performed a national tour with pieces from AΦΕ, Vinicius Salles and Jasmin Vardimon.

Since then she has performed with Bittersuite , Vinicius Salles , Fernanda Prata, Ben Judd and Dionysios Tsaftaridis, Emily Robinson Dance, Follow Through collective and others. She was also a dancer for Melanie Lomoff in The Lowry and Rambert choreographic project. Vivian was also a dancer and choreographer’s assistant for Hagit Yakira’s community project ‘On Falling and Recovery’ and rehearsal director for Hagit’s project Dance for Platinum at Royal Albert Hall (2018).

She has performed in theaters like Royal Opera House, Richmix, Sadler’s Wells, The Place, Nothern Ballet and others.

She passionately teaches dance, dance theater and improvisation to kids, adults and professionals. She has taught for leading organisations such as Trinity Laban, The Place, City Lit, Greenwich Dance and others. Vivian is the founder of workshops ; 'Energy and flow', a contemporary dance workshop and 'Movement waves' an outdoors community improvisation workshop-usually happening by the sea! She created her own dance company in 2019 and her works have been supported by Tripspace, Chisenhale Dance, Arts Council England, Dance cultural center and others. She also studies Mass Media and Communication where she focuses on the psychology branch which she combines in the dance practice.

She has been a Towards Vivencia trainer since 2021.

Melanie Lopez. Communications Manager

Born in Germany and raised in Spain, Melanie López López started training extensively in classical ballet at the age of 4, exploring later on as well Flamenco, Spanish dance and Contemporary Dance. In 2009, being awarded a scholarship for artists, she moved to London to study at the London Contemporary Dance School, graduating with a Master of Arts in Contemporary Dance in 2011.

As a professional dancer, Melanie developed her career accross Europe. Her versatility allowed her to work with companies and choreographers of diverse styles, ranging from classical/neoclassical, such as the Peter Schaufuss Ballet (Denmark) or the National Ballet of Ireland, to Contemporary companies such as the Tanztheater Münster (Germany) and Stadttheater Hagen (Germany). She danced in works created under the direction of choreographers such as Gustavo Ramírez Sansano (Spain), Javier de Frutos (UK), Henrique Rodovalho (Brasil), James Wilton (UK), Hans Henning Paar (Germany), Avâtara Ayuso (Spain) and Yoshua Cienfuegos (Spain). Being part of the International research project Estancias Coreográficas (Spain), that brings together artists of different fields and dance academics, between 2015 to 2018, she worked with Ravid Abarbanel, Olga Pericet and Dana Raz amongst others, to explore and analyse creation procedures.

Aside of her career as a dancer and due to her interest in choreography, in the recent years she created a number of short pieces: Closer and { } were presented at Theater Münster (Germany) as part of the program “Tanz Labor”. In 2017, she was commisioned by the Münsteraner Tanz Festival and for the “Ökumenische Kirchennacht” in Coesfeld (Germany) in 2018 . The same year the solo 17Pétalos was premiered for the pARTicipate exhibition at the Wesserrenaisance Museum in Lemgo (Germany); which was reworked and extended to be performed in different cities in north Spain as part the dance festival “La Red’19”.

Currently, Melanie is touring with Proyecto Titoyaya (Spain); continues collaborating in different projects with Theaterlabor Bielefeld (Germany), and is developing her new solo "Raices Suspendidas", which was selected for the platform "Me, myself & I" of the Certamen Coreográfico Paso a2 in Madrid and got a Mention of Honour for technical excellence at the International dance Festival "Diálogos Contemporáneos" in Cáceres (Spain).