ISABELLE NELSON

I work across arts management, producing and learning and engagement, with a background of fifteen years as a performer, choreographer and teacher in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and New Zealand. I co-founded IN Dance Co. in Amsterdam and directed the company from 2019 to 2023, managing approximately €80,000 in Dutch public funding across eight funders, and holding artistic direction alongside programming, contracting and company administration. I wrote and administered every funding application the company made, and produced work for stage and screen.

My MA in Arts and Cultural Management, awarded with distinction by Leuphana University in 2026, compared support systems for freelance dancers in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, drawing on interviews with training institutions and with Arts Council England, BAPAM, One Dance UK, Dachverband Tanz Deutschland and Dansveilig. It closed with eight recommendations for UK practice. I am a Certified Countertechnique Teacher and have taught at Rambert School, London Contemporary Dance School, Codarts Rotterdam, KHiO Oslo and Henny Jurriëns Stichting, among others.

Alongside this I have built and delivered engagement work. With IN Dance Co. I designed and funded Dance on Film, a workshop series across four sessions for around seventy participants of mixed experience. I have delivered workshops for young people and community groups across the Netherlands and New Zealand through Danstheater AYA and Java Dance, often with participants who had no formal dance training and no shared language. I have also worked with mixed-ability artists through Curtis & Co and Indepen-dance, where inclusion is the condition the work is made in rather than an adjustment to it.

I am now focused on building learning and engagement programmes grounded in frontline artistic practice and in research into artists’ working lives. A fuller biography, including performance and choreographic credits, is here.

My mission in my work:

To research and discover cross-disciplinary methods of creation and to elevate and find a common connection between ones-self and others through freedom of expression

ISABELLE NELSON

I work across arts management, producing and learning and engagement, with a background of fifteen years as a performer, choreographer and teacher in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and New Zealand. I co-founded IN Dance Co. in Amsterdam and directed the company from 2019 to 2023, managing approximately €80,000 in Dutch public funding across eight funders, and holding artistic direction alongside programming, contracting and company administration. I wrote and administered every funding application the company made, and produced work for stage and screen.

My MA in Arts and Cultural Management, awarded with distinction by Leuphana University in 2026, compared support systems for freelance dancers in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, drawing on interviews with training institutions and with Arts Council England, BAPAM, One Dance UK, Dachverband Tanz Deutschland and Dansveilig. It closed with eight recommendations for UK practice. I am a Certified Countertechnique Teacher and have taught at Rambert School, London Contemporary Dance School, Codarts Rotterdam, KHiO Oslo and Henny Jurriëns Stichting, among others.

Alongside this I have built and delivered engagement work. With IN Dance Co. I designed and funded Dance on Film, a workshop series across four sessions for around seventy participants of mixed experience. I have delivered workshops for young people and community groups across the Netherlands and New Zealand through Danstheater AYA and Java Dance, often with participants who had no formal dance training and no shared language. I have also worked with mixed-ability artists through Curtis & Co and Indepen-dance, where inclusion is the condition the work is made in rather than an adjustment to it.

I am now focused on building learning and engagement programmes grounded in frontline artistic practice and in research into artists’ working lives. A fuller biography, including performance and choreographic credits, is here.