" We're a research and development organisation with a particular interest in how culture shapes the way we live in our body - we look specifically at the implications for our youngest children. "

Read: Interview with Penny Greenland, from JABADAO

JABADAO Fundamentals

Explore: Developmental Movement Play

" We've developed and transformed our approach quite significantly... and it's no coincidence that it's alongside the whole team training we did around Developmental Movement Play. "

" Key workers say that their relationships with their key children are developing into closer, more trusting partnerships now they are using movement play as a means of communicating and building relationships."

The JABADAO Team

Penny Greenland - Director

Penny is a dancer. She set up JABADAO in 1985 and still steers the team. She also makes community films, (and sometimes performs).

She teaches across the UK and loves it as much now as ever.

She is author of Hopping Home Backwards: body intelligence and movement play. And created the book What Dancers Do that Other Health Workers Don't.

Abigail Greenland - Associate Practitioner

Abigail says she is also a theatre maker, performer and co-director of RashDash, (see Helen Goalen) - a company making theatre that combines text, music and full-bodied physicality. And she has also been working with JABADAO for over ten years and share the feeling that the work of RashDash is greatly influenced by this collaboration.

Amy Manancourt - Associate Practitioner

Amy is a dancer, a yoga teacher and Director of Creative Humans - a dance company that specialises in creating performance work with people you have profound and multiple learning disabilities.

Dancing in the Dales combines her love of this work with her love of the place she grew up.

Rachael Savage - Trustee

Rachel is Artistic Director of Vamos Theatre. After working nationally and internationally for fifteen years, she founded Vamos Theatre in 2006. Rachael steers the company's creative vision and direction, and creates all of Vamos's artistic programme from arts in health, to walkabout, to full scale touring shows.

Matt Mulligan - Associate Practitioner

Matt combines movement, meditation, dance, acrobatics and yoga in his practice. He performs and and teaches nationally and internationally, Since 2015 he has been sharing his physical practice through BODY ROOTS. He teaches DMP and a is a member of the Tig team with JABADAO.

Finn Morrell - Trustee

Finn is Artistic Director of Temper Theatre, a physical theatre company creating work around socio-political and environmental issues. He is also founder and Co-Director of the Cambridge International Arts Festival. He is an Associate Practitioner at East 15 Drama School, and teaches and devises physical theatre at Schools and Universities across the UK.

Ian Heywood - JABADAO Shop

an has run the JABADAO shop since 2006.

He is also a musician and JABADAO's Musical Director. He led the band from (almost) the beginning and has written and arranged many tea dances, ceilidhs and CDs for the company.

He is Chair of the community music company Music in Our Bones - which specialises in work in dementia and mental health communities.

Helena Rodwell - Trustee

Helena spent 40 years as a teacher of Dance, Drama and PE in both mainstream and special schools. She also worked as a community dancer and project leader, with young people with learning disabilities, and prisoners at Blundeston Prison.

Catherine Wilks - Trustee

Catherine is a dancer who has developed teams to lead ambitious & experimental art, design, movement and play work within social enterprise, mental health and corporate spaces.

Helen Goalen - Associate Practitioner

Helen is a theatre maker, performer and co-director of RashDash, a company making theatre that combines text, music and full-bodied physicality. She has been working with JABADAO for over ten years and the work of RashDash is greatly influenced by this collaboration.