Our Directors

Louise Richards and Kevin Finnan are Motionhouse's founding directors. They formed Motionhouse in 1988 and for the first 10 years they shared artistic directorship.

As the company grew they chose to split the joint role into Executive and Artistic Directors. Kevin continues as Artistic Director and he's responsible for conceiving and directing our performance work. Louise is responsible for strategic planning and producing all elements of our busy programme.

Despite their separate roles Louise and Kevin continue to work closely together. Louise has a large input into the artistic work and acts as a sounding board for Kevin's ideas. She also teaches our dancers and supports the whole artistic team. Likewise Kevin remains involved in our forward planning and contributes to all our long term strategic decisions.

Highlights of 2012 included: the creation of The Voyage for London 2012 Festival, international touring of Scattered, European touring of festival pieces Underground and Cascade, the addition of Traction and Waiting Game to our touring repertoire and Kevin Finnan’s appointment as Choreographer and Movement Director for the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Paralympic Games.  2013 promises to be just as exciting starting with a highly successful 6 week US tour of Scattered before moving onto further international touring. We celebrate our 25th year of creating work with the development of a new outdoor piece Captive and the continued R&D for a new production Broken. We also continue to offer our PerfectEd GCSE programme and ongoing participatory activity.

Kevin Finnan, Motionhouse’s Artistic DirectorKevin Finnan

As Motionhouse's Artistic Director Kevin has created, either alone or in collaboration with Louise, each of our major touring productions. This includes all of Motionhouse's theatre productions as well as a series of shorter festival pieces and our large scale outdoor spectacles.

Kevin is passionate about exploring and exploding the traditional use of space in performance and has a history of creating extraordinary dance spectacles including the acclaimed Machine Dance for JCB diggers and dancers. In 2012 he was Choreographer and Movement Director for the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Paralympic Games. That same year, he created The Voyage for the London 2012 Festival – an enormous outdoor performance event performed on a life size ship in the centre of Birmingham and made in collaboration with Legs On The Wall from Australia. 
Kevin has created bespoke performance events to celebrate cultural capital celebrations in Copenhagen and Marseille-Provence and has also been commissioned to make work for numerous other companies in the UK and further afield.

 

Committed to collaboration, Kevin has worked with artists from many disciplines including writer A.L.Kennedy, installation artist Rosa Sanchez, film-makers Logela Multimedia, set visionary Simon Dormon and international companies such as Legs On The Wall and Vancouver’s Headlines Theatre.

Kevin has an MA in Contemporary Performing Arts from University College Bretton Hall and a PhD in Theatre from Warwick University. He is also a visiting Fellow at the University of Warwick and Associate Artist of Greenwich+Docklands International Festival.


 

Louise Richards, Motionhouse’s Executive DirectorLouise Richards

Louise is producer of the Motionhouse programme, strategically leading the company in realising the vision she develops with Kevin.  Louise is instrumental in developing the many partnerships Motionhouse enjoys across the industry.  She is skilled at spotting opportunities for the company and persuasive in her pitches for funding, commissioning, project development and collaboration. Originally a dancer and choreographer she has undertaken numerous commissions for other companies and maintains close links with the performing company and creative process.  She continues to teach the company's devised style, offering inspirational training to dancers, students, teachers and practitioners both in the UK and throughout the world.

Louise is regularly invited to attend and speak at seminars and conferences. Committed to the development of the sector, she also acts as a mentor for young performers and smaller organisations, as well as developing a range of apprenticeships and professional development strands to the Motionhouse programme. She is currently on the management group for Mimbre and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back to top