Conversations for the Moving Self

This week Megan sits down with sister duo Sadé and Kristina Alleyne, founders of Alleyne Dance, to talk about building a decade-long creative partnership as twins, mothers, and artists. From their roots in athletics to founding their own company in 2014, they open up about navigating long-distance collaboration (Kristina in Antwerp, Sadé in London), leading projects solo through pregnancy and new motherhood, and the balance of rigor and care that defines their teaching style.

They also dig into the realities of sustaining a dance company financially in a tightening industry, how their athletics background continues to shape the way they train and push dancers safely, and Kristina's move into movement therapy after years of community work on productions like Far From Home. Along the way, they reflect on the informal boundaries that keep sister time and work time separate, and what it really takes to protect your own wellbeing while giving so much to others — especially heading into a busy touring summer with kids in tow.

Grab your headphones for an honest, warm conversation about sisterhood, sustainability, and staying rooted in movement 🎧

Recorded live in front of an audience at the Octopus Print Gallery — our first-ever in-person recording — host Megan sits down with two dance educators whose careers span two very different worlds: Mauritius and London.

Kurty Linsley Genevieve is a Mauritian dancer, choreographer, and creative educator with 20+ years across ballet, Kathak, jazz, and contemporary, and a gold medal at the Jeux de la Francophonie with Les Frères Joseph. Since 2012 he's been a leading teacher and choreographer at Le Studio Dance School Mauritius.

Arran Green is a London-based performer, director, and educator shaped by Capoeira and Hip-Hop, with training through the National Youth Dance Company of England and London Contemporary Dance School. He now lectures at Rambert School and sits on the board of trustees at Sadler's Wells.

In this episode: how each of them found movement in the first place (a childhood stage debut, a breakdance competition that turned into a free bus pass), what a working week actually looks like at 20 years into a dance career, and Arran's metaphor of teaching as tending a garden — years of planting now finally being harvested.

But the real heart of the conversation is a harder question: not what you do outside the studio to take care of yourself, but what it costs inside it. Both guests get candid about the toll of holding space for other people's ambitions — Kurty on the difficulty of balancing discipline with warmth across a new, more questioning generation of students, and Arran on the quietly self-destructive side of teaching, and the two selves he's had to build to survive it.

They close on what's exciting them next — not more dance, necessarily, but who they might become once the routine they've built their whole identity around eventually has to change.

Check out Adianna Valentine's It's Just Dance Podcast as well.

https://m.youtube.com/@itsjustdancepodcast?ra=m&fbclid=PAZnRzaATgbmJwZG9mAmV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDzEyNDAyNDU3NDI4NzQxNAABp1Tfi1YzuhJwDOIAEwP_dGd8TyOIo1ThBcYtKWELqPKnzrWdOPqLnZPzae8T_aem_ShQgM2L2oehWj0QDkgf9RA

In this episode, Megan sits down with Bethany Wynn, a Level 5 advanced clinical massage therapist based in London with a background in musical theatre. Bethany shares her journey from performing on cruise ships and UK tours to building a thriving massage practice rooted in compassion rather than the "no pain, no gain" mentality she grew up with in performing arts.
They dig into what it really means to take care of your body as a mover or performer, from the loneliness of being sidelined by an injury with zero support, to redefining self-care as something accessible and ongoing rather than a luxury reserved for when things go wrong. Bethany opens up about why she stepped back from performing, how massage and the stage have always been intertwined in her life, and the powerful idea of finding your "village" of people who genuinely have your back.
The conversation also covers Bethany's new 16-week research project exploring how clinical massage can support people through grief, plus practical wisdom on listening to your body's whispers before they become shouts, and learning to tell the difference between resistance born from fear and resistance that's your body asking you to slow down.
A warm, honest conversation about movement, healing, community, and giving yourself permission to rest (dog cameo included).

This episode features Laurent, a yoga and somatic teacher whose approach blends Scaravelli Yoga with Feldenkrais-based somatic work. Laurent has been practicing yoga for over three decades, starting in the disciplined world of Ashtanga in the 90s before discovering a more receptive, listening-based approach through Scaravelli and years of one-to-one study with teachers including osteopath John Stirk and a direct lineage holder of Vanda Scaravelli's teaching.

Recorded during Mental Health Awareness Week, the conversation explores what "action" really means when it comes to wellbeing, why self-care often needs to come before we can show up for others, and how Laurent builds a personal toolkit of practices, from cranial-sacral and fascial therapy to self-massage, foot care, cooking, and gardening, depending on what a given week calls for.

Laurent and Megan also talk candidly about the current shifts happening in the yoga and wellness world, the tension between traditional and evolving practices, and a shared feeling that a "post-pandemic energy" seems to be resurfacing in people right now. A grounded, thoughtful conversation about returning to the body as a place of safety, and why there's no single right way to practice.

In this episode, host Megan sits down with Olia Polyakova — Ukrainian-born, London-based movement artist — recorded live in Mauritius, where the two former London Contemporary Dance School classmates have been spending time together. The conversation is warm, candid, and deeply personal, touching on what it really means to build a life around dance.

Olia opens up about why she chose to spend holiday time in the studio, and how dancing without stakes or agenda feels less like work and more like taking a shower — something purely for yourself. She traces her path back to growing up in Ukraine, where the only visible models for a dance career were ballerinas or teachers, and how she chose dance anyway — not because she had a plan, but because she simply couldn't imagine anything else.

The conversation moves into the honest reality of freelancing: what a bad week looks like (bar work, job hunting, silence) versus a good one (extras work on set, life modelling, studio sessions, photo shoots, club dancing). For Olia, variety isn't stressful — the absence of work is. The two also dig into training, and Olia is refreshingly candid about needing to trick herself into going to class, whether through networking instincts or sheer necessity. Neither of them find showing up easy, and the difference between training inside a structured program versus navigating it alone as a freelancer is a thread that runs throughout.

On the creative side, Olia shares how her solo work lives in detailed improvised scores rather than fixed choreography, and how tangible objects — rope, clay — tend to anchor a piece before the meaning fully arrives. Visual and conceptual elements, she explains, emerge from opposite directions and meet somewhere in the middle.

It's a genuine, unfiltered conversation about the unglamorous grind and the quiet joys of a life built around movement.

Megan sits down with Priya Khan, a certified life coach and mindfulness expert, to explore how mindfulness can be a powerful tool for women navigating demanding, passion-driven careers.
Priya shares her personal journey from the corporate world to coaching — a path sparked by motherhood and her own experience of feeling overwhelmed. She introduces a three-layered framework for self-awareness, tuning into the mind, heart, and body's energy, and explains how this approach helps her clients make decisions that feel truly aligned rather than externally pressured.
The conversation gets especially real when they dig into the unique challenges faced by dancers and performers — how passion and identity can blur, how guilt creeps in when you need to rest, and how to tell the difference between a productive push and harmful burnout.
The highlight of the episode is a live coaching moment where Priya guides Megan through a mindfulness exercise in real time, helping her shift from frustration to clarity and practical action — a beautiful demonstration of how these tools work in everyday life.
The episode closes with Priya reflecting on how she finds joy amid personal hardship, offering a grounding reminder about the power of gratitude and intentional balance.

In this episode, Megan sits down with Jasmin Rothwell, yoga teacher and somatic coach based in London, for an honest conversation about what it really takes to build a life around movement and well-being.
Jasmin opens up about her path from corporate recruitment to the yoga mat — from burning out building a yoga community in Manchester, to relocating to London for a fresh start and a much-needed period of reflection. She shares what it's really like to freelance in one of the world's most expensive cities, and why she recently made the decision to take on a part-time job to bring more structure and sustainability to her week, without giving up the work she loves.
They get into the real barriers facing newly qualified yoga teachers in London, where high certification requirements and studio access costs can make it incredibly difficult to get started. Jasmin shares the grassroots initiative she's developing to change that — creating space for new teachers to gain real experience in a supportive environment. They also explore the deeper dynamics of teaching itself: what it means to hold space for students, the balance between containment and freedom in a class, and the mutual growth that happens on both sides of the mat.
Expect honest talk about money, worth, creativity, and what it means to build a career rooted in genuine care rather than performance — and why sometimes, the most radical thing you can do is slow down.

What does it take to build a dance career on your own terms? In this episode, Megan sits down with Paloma Perez Rojas — American dancer, mentor, and founder of The Dancing Business — to trace her journey from a shy seven-year-old doing cartwheels to a working artist and entrepreneur based in Madrid, Spain.
Paloma opens up about the winding road that brought her to dance: switching from visual art to movement, stretching for 90 minutes a night to catch up with her peers, nearly choosing medicine over performance, and eventually stepping away from dance entirely before social media brought her back. Her honest content about balancing a full-time job with a dance career resonated with thousands — and sparked an idea.
Today, The Dancing Business is a thriving Instagram community and 12-week mentorship program helping dancers around the world build sustainable careers outside of traditional structures. Paloma also shares what it's like to balance this digital platform with an artist residency at Tejido Conectivo dance company in Madrid — and why community, not just creativity, is what keeps her going.
This one is for every dancer who's ever wondered if there's a different way.

In this episode, Megan sits down with Gerard Hawley — Tai Chi practitioner, teacher, and founder of a thriving school of around 100 students — to explore a practice that is as much a philosophy as it is a physical discipline. Gerard shares how Tai Chi began as a personal tool for managing stress before growing into a deeply fulfilling teaching career spanning six years, and he takes us into the technical and spiritual layers that make Tai Chi unlike any other movement practice. At the heart of the conversation are two powerful concepts: Wu Wei — the Taoist principle of going with the flow rather than forcing — and No Mind, the idea of responding instinctively and without overthinking, whether in martial practice or everyday life.
Together, Megan and Gerard unpack the balance between Tai Chi's martial roots and its meditative qualities, and why that tension is actually what makes the practice so rich. Gerard reflects on what it means to teach a discipline that asks students to move softly while remaining deeply connected — and how that same principle applies to navigating life's challenges. He also shares his vision for growing awareness of Tai Chi across the UK, collaborating with other experienced practitioners, and bringing this ancient art to more people, including those with health challenges who might not immediately see themselves as Tai Chi students.

In this episode, Megan sits down with Stephanie Mattiussi — dance scientist, educator, and head of dance science and health at London Contemporary Dance School — for a conversation that feels both personal and deeply professional. Stephanie traces her journey from early ballet and tap training through to discovering dance science at university, sharing how combining her love of movement with her curiosity for science opened up a whole new path. Recording just ten days before her due date, she also reflects openly on how her movement practice has shifted during pregnancy, bringing a refreshing honesty to what it means to listen to your body in different seasons of life.
Together, Megan and Stephanie explore what a truly holistic approach to movement and health looks like — both for the students Stephanie supports and for herself. They discuss the balance between conditioning and caring for the body, the importance of treating people as humans first, and how community and connection can transform the way we relate to physical practice. Stephanie also shares her strategies for staying grounded when energy is low, reminding us that rest and boundaries are just as much a part of a healthy practice as movement itself.