Forefront Dance Artistic Director
School of Arts and Humanities
Hayley Ryan is Artistic Director of Forefront Dance, an emerging contemporary dance company established by dance students at University Campus Suffolk. Under Hayley’s guidance, the company acts as a professional development tool, enabling members to utilise and practice the skills learned within the dance degree programme.
In 2009 Hayley Ryan gained a first class Degree in Dance and Culture from the University of Surrey. She then went on to gain a Masters Degree in Dance: Performance at the University of Chichester. As a member of Map Dance 09-10, the postgraduate touring company lead by Yael Flexer and Detta Howe at the University of Chichester, Hayley worked with Shobana Jeyasingh, Matthias Sperling, Gregory Maqoma, Keira Martin and Colin Poole.
As an emerging artist with Delve Dance Company, Les Langues Physique Dance Company and Dance Physics, Hayley continues to develop the skills and knowledge base needed to be a contemporary dancer in a repertory company.
Hayley is also an associate teacher for Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company, leading repertoire and creative workshops that have been developed to support the study of Faultline (2008), a professional work on the AQA GCSE Dance Syllabus. Hayley’s academic research centres upon the historical and cultural context of identity. She endeavours to historically situate the gender construction of the ballerina in the cultural contexts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, investigating the aesthetic values of ballet and the cultural standards of beauty and femininity.