We’re very pleased to announce three new appointments to our Board of Directors, bringing specialisms in finance and contemporary artistic practice to augment the Board’s already powerfully diverse range of skills.

Paul Higgins is a Chartered Accountant with 30 years business experience. After training with Ernst & Young in Leeds he worked for them in Australia for 3 years, before returning to the UK. He has held Finance Director roles at various SME businesses, in the business services, financial services and care sectors. He also works with many private clients whose businesses include retail, creative arts and IT.

Beth Cassani is a dramaturg, award-winning choreographer and teacher based in Leeds. She works extensively as an artist, mentor and dramaturg and teaches company class for international dance companies. Beth developed the new MA Choreography programme at Leeds Beckett University where she lectures and co-directs an ongoing research project Questioning the Contemporary which curates and presents research events. Beth is currently an artist mentor and performer in Vanessa Grasse’s MESH for the Great Exhibition of the North and is collaborating with Joseph Mercier on a new choreographic work.

David Harradine is an artist, working across performance, film, installation, books and digital art.  As co-founder and Co-Artistic Director of Fevered Sleep (feveredsleep.co.uk) he has made projects with Tate, The Place, Dance4, National Theatre Wales, Wellcome Collection, The Lowry, Brighton Festival, and the Young Vic.  He is also Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London.

Paul, Beth and David join as we embark on our new NPO funding relationship with Arts Council England, 2018 – 2022. We are very grateful to them all – and to the rest of the Board – for helping steer Yorkshire Dance through the next phase of its life.