Gaia Silvan is a Multidisciplinary Artist, from Kintyre, now based in Glasgow. She is a recent graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Contemporary Performance Practice. As a black-mixed race, neurodiverse, queer woman/person and coming from a rural upbringings, she has always been drawn to exploring the intricacies of her/our identities. What makes us human, and draws us together? Her work has a strong sense of physicality and storytelling and is led by intuition. Combining dance, performance, paintings, and music inspired by the universe around and within, she creates work that explores her relationship to intersectionality. She likes to make work which pours from the soul and  sparks joy.

During this residency they will be developing a new performance titled ‘What Now?’. This project is an exploration of the mental health issues they have faced after graduating. It is a dive into the liminal space. What do we do when one stage ‘ends’ and another ‘begins’?... Depression, Anxiety, anticipation, processing and healing. Processing the past, present and future. Who am I now? What have I been? What will I become? These are all questions that continue to arise on this strange and magical ever-unfolding and never-ending journey…

Marios Ento-Engkolo is a Glasgow-based dance artist, who is interested in storytelling and emotional expression through movement. Marios is half Greek and Half Cameroonian and he was born and raised in Athens, Greece. His journey with movement started in 2017 and has become the primary medium of expression, connection and release ever since. Marios has worked with many artists and dance-forms ranging from Street Dance, such as Hip-Hop, Afrobeats and Dancehall, to Contemporary and Experimental movement.

During this residency, Marios will continue the research and development of his autobiographical work ‘Dualism’. The term ‘dualism’ has a variety of uses in the history of thought, however, mainly is the idea that there are two fundamental polarities in most conditions.  For example, good and evil or soft and hard, are equal forces in the world, which are dependent on each other, even though most of the time they are perceived as conflicted. The project explores this conflict through the lens of my life as a mixed-race, queer man, brought up in his home country, Greece.