Joseph Toonga

Joseph Toonga is a dancer, leads Just Us Dance Theatre and is co-founder of artist led hip-hop initiative Artists4Artists, a support network for hip hop artists. As a dance artist he is fascinated with the rawness, compactness and precision of hip-hop.

He fuses it with structures from contemporary choreography to create a unique vocabulary incorporating storytelling and narrative to explore and physicalise emotive themes relevant in today’s society.

Joseph established Just Us Dance Theatre to inspire, nurture and support, providing the conditions for artists to create and collaborate. This included establishing mentoring programmes, Let’s Shine Mentorship and New&Notable, to support and provide tools and opportunities for young hip-hop dance-theatre artists to achieve their goals.

Joseph’s Jerwood Bursary will fund five days preparation work with a producer to continue creating a solid foundation for a strategy ahead of a concentrated creation period for a manageable transition to mid-career, including building and diversifying UK and international commissions, teaching and mentoring.

www.justusdancetheatre.org

Joseph Toonga, Born to Manifest, 2019 ©The Other Richard