Nina Atkinson

Nina completed her undergraduate and MA training at Trinity Laban and founded Loop Dance Company in 1993. As Founder and Artistic Director of Loop, Nina has worked with many well know choreographers. She has created many works for Loop including site specific, site sensitive, installation and film based work with both professional and community performers. In addition she has led and overseen many community, youth and educational dance projects. 

In 2004 Nina returned from a two-year sabbatical in New York studying Limón technique on the Professional Studies Program at the Limón Dance Foundation. During her time in the US Nina also taught at PeridanceCenter, participated in open classes and studied Low Flying Trapeze with Fly-By-Night Dance Theatre. In 2008 Nina returned to New York to study on the first Limón Teachers Program.

Nina's research interests lie in creating artwork for unusual spaces, from large-scale site-specific work to intimate installation experiences. The work is reflective of her dance perspective, emotive and human in its interaction with the viewer. Many of these works have been created in collaboration with artists from different genres bringing creative souls together in a meaningful partnership has become an expertise.

Nina is also an advocate for the development of emerging dance artists, mentoring many fledgling artists. She is passionate about dance as a means of expression and sharing its benefits as a life tool. She is committed to creating a safe and nurturing environment to foster creativity in all types of people and encourage an inquisitive mind.

Nina creates emotive contemporary performances. More recently Nina’s creative focus has centred on intimate installations that involve the audience as part of the art whilst encouraging visceral emotive responses to sensory environments. Her current project Exploring Sensory Sensation (ESS) is a practice initiated research project investigating Kinaesthetic Empathy with regards to the ‘felt sense’ and how audiences react to immersive and intimate work. Concerned with the notion of questioning if vision stimulates kinaesthetic empathy, investigating the audience’s perception in partnership with neuroscientist Dr Judith Bex from BEAM lab based at the University of Manchester.