Joe Powell-Main, the freelance dancer and choreographer “on wheels and crutches”, has begun a ‘GOFUNDME’ project to support his new company, JPM Productions, in developing projects to give opportunities to freelancers, engage with different communities and “create lasting positive change that defies and breaks down boundaries”. Money raised will go towards making sure the freelance creatives are paid fairly and access costs and hiring accessible spaces for performances and rehearsals are covered.
Powell-Main says:
I would like to thank Graham for extending this platform to me. I also want to thank in advance all the gramilano.com readers for their support. This blog has been particularly supportive to my career in the past year especially, through amazing reviews of my work at last year’s Empower in Motion gala which I was so grateful for, and also numerous articles about my work with The Royal Ballet and Opera through the Festival of New Choreography and The Next Generation Festival.
I hope you are all able to join me on this new chapter of my freelance career, the development of JPM Productions, which I believe can give amazing opportunities for freelance creatives just like me. My aim is to create new accessible dance work that is showcased both independently and through collaboration with leading dance companies, with representation and you the audience at the heart of everything! I very much hope I get the chance to perform for you all again soon as a small thank you for your continued championing of my journey.
Yes, regular gramilano readers will have already come across his work. Graham Watts reviewed a piece created by The Royal Ballet’s Kristen McNally for Northern Ballet with Powell-Main (“5 minutes of frothy fun”) which was performed at the Linbury Theatre earlier this year, saying that it was “an impressive exercise in equity that challenged perceptions of dancers’ abilities.”
McNally and Powell-Main had previously worked together for The Royal Ballet, a project that arose from a conversation between Royal Ballet’s director Kevin O’Hare and former principal dancer, Alexander Campbell. O’Hare told me:
One good thing about COVID is that we had more conversations – usually you finish a rehearsal, rush to Graham’s interview, and then there’s this other thing to do… the real world. During COVID, I was calling to make sure dancers were OK, so I remember being an hour and a half on the phone with Alexander talking about what he was interested in, and saw how thoughtful he was about this world, and then he came up with some other ideas. We brought in Joe Powell-Main, a wheelchair-user dancer, and put them together, and something good came out of that.
The ‘something good’ was Sleepwalker, a ten-minute duet with Hannah Rudd and Powell-Main, and produced by Campbell. It was seen during the Empower in Motion programme at Sadler’s Wells in 2024, which also contained his choreography for his solo Passionately Defiant. Our critic Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel wrote:
Powell-Main is one of the key inspirations for this event… against all odds, the former Royal Ballet School White Lodge student, who suffered a spinal injury, was to rise again and forge his career within the realms of inclusive dance.
Stoic and determined, Powell-Main showed his audience that life’s hardest challenges can bring much beauty and joy.
Here are some words from his GOFUNDME project:
I have been fortunate to have some amazing collaborations with different organisations, but as a disabled person there can be huge challenges and barriers to work, alongside the usual difficulties of being a freelancer. Recently I made the decision to officially create JPM Productions. This is a new production company dedicated to pushing the boundaries, with access and inclusion at its core, with me a disabled leader as its founding director.
Through this new venture I aim to create original dance work in the contemporary and ballet genres that speaks and represents audiences and is showcased through collaborations with leading dance companies as well as independently funded projects.
As a freelance disabled dancer I am aware of the challenges that living with a disability brings and also the challenge of being a freelancer, and sometimes not knowing when the next time you are going to earn a regular wage or do what you love, which in this case is sharing the joy of movement, with you, the audience. This can be extremely frustrating and isolating.
Things are changing in the dance and ballet world with more diverse creatives starting to emerge, however there is still an under-representation of dancers who are disabled, neurodivergent, and of different ethnicities.
I was worried I wouldn’t be employed as a dancer in the industry because I didn’t feel like I fitted the mould. At JPM Productions I don’t want other dancers to feel like that. I want to create a project based collective of dancers who come together for a united goal, to create dance and ballet work that is high quality and accessible. I want representation to be at the heart of everything!
I also want to bring performances to local communities so it can be on your doorstep.
But to do that I need your assistance.
Find out more about Joe Powell-Main here: joepowellmain.com
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.