Katie Hagan – Dance Art Journal
Morag Deyes MBE, Artistic Director, Dance Base
His dance journey began whilst at secondary school (Lister Community School) where he took a keen interest in break dance. Following school he went onto NewVic Sixth Form College where he met his biggest dance influencers FM, Kofi Mingo and Skittles who really pushed his physical ability and from this decided to form a career in dance and furthered his training at Lewisham College and London Contemporary Dance School.
During his training Joseph performed and toured in work by Robert Hylton and Freddie Opoku-Addaie and took a keen interest in choreography from his first year at The Place.
He won the Blueprint Bursary award at just 20 years old and following that created a female piece which was performed at Sadlers Wells.
It has always been a passion for Joseph to have a parallel strand to his work that gave back to the community he came from.
In his last year of training at The Place Joseph was awarded the Deutsche Bank young creatives award to birth the Let’s Shine Mentorship Programme, which ran for 3 consecutive years, supporting students from the educational establishments Joseph previously attended.
From then he developed the New&Notable programme which he now successfully runs annually in Brazil.