ABOUT
Dance Network Association (DNA) is a dance charity that enables people to live more connected, joyful and aspirational lives through dance.
Dancing with DNA provides opportunities for people to improve their confidence and physical wellbeing, nurtures creativity and independent thinking and enhances friendships through social interaction.
OUR CORE TEAM
Gemma Wright
CEO and Founder
Gemma has always had a passion for dance and leadership initially studying BA (Hons) Performance Studies at the University of Northampton and completing her dance teaching qualifications (DDTAL) at Trinity Laban.
Gemma holds 17 years of experience in teaching community dance, arts management and producing and has held past positions at the Royal Academy of Dance, Trinity Laban, dancedigital and Dance East.
Gemma’s personal background and experience has helped her to develop a wide understanding of the positive impact dance can have on people’s lives in terms of bringing joy, connection and supporting positive wellbeing. Gemma truly believes that dance is the best form of medicine. All this motivated her to form the Dance Network Association in 2015.
Karen Pratt
Dancing for Joy Programme Manager
Karen trained at Roehampton University where she gained a BA (hons) in Dance Studies and completed a PGCE at University Campus Suffolk in 2014. Karen has worked in various educational settings in Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire.
Karen started with the organisation as a freelance artist in 2015, supporting Jen Irons on our first mass dance project Dance Rio and leading our Youth Company 'Dance Station' and our Dancing with Parkinson's classes. Karen took up a part-time post in 2019 to support the charity's mission to make people smile through dancing. From here, our programmes have grown from strength to strength. Karen has now taken the position of our Dancing for Joy Programme Manager, where she manages all our community programmes, including Dance on Prescription.
Away from dna Karen also teaches various older movers classes and youth dance programmes in Suffolk, as well as making her professional community dance performance work under Karen Louise Dance.
Steph Townsend
Freelance Education Manager and Communications Officer
Steph is a Norwich based Creative Movement Practitioner whose passion lies in creating opportunities and experiences for people of all ages, to express themselves and explore emotion through Aerial Arts, Dance and Yoga.
Steph graduated from Coventry University in 2012 with a First Class BA (Hons) in Dance Making and Performance. Since graduating, Steph has continued to perform, create and lead classes for people aged 3-65+ years, as well as work as a Freelance Project Manager for over 6 years.
Throughout her career, Steph has grown to appreciate the importance of trusted and genuine relationships in the dance sector and developed a passion for creating and nurturing valuable connections between artists, organisations and participants.
Steph's values closely aligned with dna's mission and encouraged her to take up the role of freelance project manager within our team. Steph will be working mainly with schools and on our socials. Still, she is your go-to for anything Mass Dance if you have a one-off workshop or bespoke needs to be designed for your school. She also looks after our artists with various CPD and moments of conversation.
Kelly-Anne Chambers
Support Officer
Kelly joined dna in March 2023 as our Support Officer. Kelly will be on the other end of the phone or email for all your general enquiries and will be looking after all our participants on a weekly basis.
Kelly has an extensive background in business support and a true passion for dance and theatre. Since the age of two Kelly trained in multiple styles of dance and graduated from Hull University with a First Class BA (Hons) in Drama where she co-produced her own dance theatre production.
Alongside working for dna, Kelly teaches adult dance classes in Chelmsford under MPWR HOUR Dance Fitness, where she aims to empower adults of all abilities through movement and share the incredible benefits of dance with others.
dna's registered office is
Mercury Theatre Colchester
Balkerne Gate
Colchester
CO1 1PT
dna are a charity organisation and therefore the team are all working part-time and flexible hours.
Photographs throughout this website (unless otherwise stated) are courtesy of our Associate Photographer: Rachel Cherry http://www.rachelcherry.co.uk
Privacy
Your privacy is important to you and Dance Network Association. We make every effort to ensure that the information you share with us is recorded accurately, retained securely and used only according to your wishes.
We protect your personal information and adhere to all current data protection act legislation concerning and protecting privacy. We do not give out, sell or trade our mailing list data with external organisations. We comply with the Data Protection Act 1998, the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) and the new General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) 2018.
How long is data kept:
Where you have been involved directly with us, your information will be kept on file for a maximum of 9 years. Video, photographs and evaluation reports where you may have been present or involved will be kept indefinitely and used in various social media and marketing promotions via only the Dance Network Association unless expressed otherwise on your permissions/release forms.
