BIOGRAPHY
Physically manifested in her current form on the planet Earth near the end of the 20th century, Katherine grew up and was socially formatted in the geographical zone known as Berkshire, England. She was drawn from an early age to the arts, the unknown and a search for ultimate truth. Constantly engaged in music and dance; composing, writing and other creative activities, Katherine set about trying to understand the world starting from her internal reality, gradually widening her sphere of attention to the outside world leading her from her immediate surroundings out in to the depths of the universe.
Music became a mystical passion when, around 12 years old, Katherine identified the Dorian I-IV phenomenon and became obsessed with seeking out music that featured it and writing music in order to bathe in it. Composing music was a refuge from a troubled family life and she would lock herself away in a creative, magical world for hours each day.
Throughout her childhood and youth, Katherine trained to a professional level as a classical percussionist but was secretly a composer of cheesy ballads and unashamed upbeat pop. She discovered Funk and Disco at 17 years old and never moved her hips in the same way again.
M.E. hit in 2000 and Katherine found herself almost bedridden for around 2 years before starting a long recovery process which lasted over 15 years. This process involved much exploration and discovery into energy, emotions and spirituality.
During this period Katherine fell in love with Brazilian culture and spent much time in Bahia and Pernambuco learning the music, the language and (little by little as her energy slowly returned) traditional North-Eastern dances.
Her university studies (Music and Arts Management, Dartington College of Arts) took her into the world of avant-garde arts. A love of rhythm tap dance and fascination for the tight-nit tap/jazz jam scene in New York scene took Katherine across the Atlantic for several months.
The inspiration to create new projects and activities and an ability to bring people together led to the creation of the Brazilian percussion project Ilu Axé, with fellow percussionist and Candomblé Alabé Jon Hardeman. This percussion school/performance group/community was created in Bristol, UK in 2006 and a sister project set up in 2012 in Marseille, France where Katherine went to live to exchange the drizzly grey skies of England for the radiant sunshine and turquoise sea in the South of France. She also created the Brass Batuc (Brass and Brazilian Percussion) to play her Brazilian-fusion arrangements and compositions.
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Body Music came tapping on her shoulder when Katherine was invited to record on French singer Camille's platinum-selling "Music Hole" album, with fellow Dartington graduade Matthew Ker (Majiker) and the incredible Barbatuques who took her to Sao Brazil and the International Body Music festival. She has taught and explored Body Music in workshops all over the UK and France with a regular group of students in Marseille to test out her new ideas. She works in the community with the Hôpital Eduard Toulouse, with autistic children and in schools. In 2016 Katherine created the body percussion and a cappella voice quintet Tchicada to further push the musical boundries of the human body.
Interest in about the origins of humanity, the essence of existence, the conscience, the exploration of the self and the healing of past traumas were becoming a bigger and bigger part of her life and around 2017 Katherine began to crave intergrating this side of herself with her art and her teaching. This naturally led her to the worlds of spirituality, somatic arts and contact improvisation where she fell into a community of artists with a shared sensitivity and common fields of research. She started to explore and study Tantra, Body-Mind Centering®, clowning and Contact Improvisation.
Her personal research and experimentation explored Kundalini and Reiki energy, the nature of sound and vibration, perception and senses and different levels of consciousness. She spent two months in Peru learning about plant medecine and participating in ceremonies involving Ayahuasca and San Pedro. She also became a qualified ThetaHealing practioner.
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She joined the Marseille collective Studio Nomade and began teaching regular classes with a collective of dancers at Pole 164 (Natalie Hoffman, Laetitia Reboul and Aude Fondard). With this same collective she continues to offer teaching in the form of residential workshops under the name " Danses Résonances". In her teaching she offers an exploration into the breath and the voice, vibration, sensorial experiments, percussive dance and rhythm. She accompanies dance improvisation with live music or mixes of her compositions and soundscapes.
The Covid-19 pandemic and the various lockdowns that were imposed forced Katherine to take a step back from teaching and performing and allowed for a much-needed time of inner reflection. It was also an occasion to compose and produce music which became the main creative focus of 2020. Katherine began work on an EP fusing poetry, rap in minimalist contemporary hip-hop and pop arrangements. She collaborated with Amercian cross-discipline artist and musician Jules Beckman and undertook creative residencies with German dancer and choreograph Natalie Hoffman on her new show "Sensual Clouds".