OUR TEAM

ROBBY GRAHAM

Robby is a director, choreographer, writer, and technologist, and Artistic Director of Southpaw Company.

Since 2013, multi award-winning Southpaw have created powerful, joyous performances, from small scale solo work to large scale outdoor spectaculars, combining absolute artistic integrity with engaging narratives which inspire and excite audiences. Infinitely versatile and virtuosic, Southpaw’s work is inspiring, thought-provoking, engaging, and full of joie de danse.

Southpaw have developed large scale performances with partners such as Hull City of Culture, LeftCoast Blackpool, Castlemaine State Festival (Australia), Freedom Festival, Cultural Spring and South Middlesbrough Council to celebrate events such as the opening of the National Centre for the Written Word, Hull City of Culture, the opening event for Castlemaine State Festival, and most recently, the opening event for Brent: London Borough of Culture 2020.

Southpaw works under the artistic direction and unique vision of award-winning Choreographer and Director Robby Graham. Robby creates epic visual spectacle and dynamic physical storytelling sequences in which movement, music, and dialogue are seamlessly integrated.

Robby has created work across a wide number of contexts, both outdoor and in traditional theatre contexts, across the UK, Europe, South America, and Australia, and in partnership with such organisations as the National Theatre, Lyric Hammersmith, Live Theatre Newcastle, Greenwich Docklands Festival and others. Robby was Choreographer and Movement Director for Marianne Elliott’s acclaimed production of Angels in America at the National Theatre.

Robby also choreographed Pericles, the National Theatre’s first Public Acts performance incorporating over 200 community cast members from all over London, as well as choreographing the large scale adaptation of Johnathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing for Greenwich Docklands Festival, and directed and choreographed Leave To Remain at the Lyric Hammersmith.

Robby’s current work explores the intersection of live performance, digital technology and social imagination. Through Southpaw, he is developing immersive and mixed-reality performance, projection-mapped environments, interactive visual systems and new forms of participatory spectacle. His practice continues to ask how dance, theatre and technology can build empathy, create access, and bring people together through shared physical experience.

At the heart of Robby’s work is a belief that performance can be both artistically ambitious and genuinely democratic: a place where virtuosity, storytelling, community and spectacle meet.

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

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KATE PILBEAM

Kate trained on the CAT program in Newcastle and then completed the BA(Hons) Professional Dance Practice course at Dance City, Newcastle.

She has worked for Matthew Bourne’s Re:Bourne production of “Lord of the Flies” in 2014and went on to join Tavaziva as an apprentice in January 2016 for the spring tour of “Africarmen”. She continued her studies at the post-graduate company Verve 17, and performed works on tour created by Carlos Pons Guerra, Matthias Sperling and James Cousins.

Kate has worked with Southpaw on numerous projects, “RUSH” (2017 and 2018) and “Erimus” (2018) as a dancer and dance captain, also as rehearsal and tour director on “Carousel” (2018) and “Icarus” (2018).

Kate moved to Italy in 2019 and worked with Compagnia Iris for “Su i nostri viso silvani” and Free Event for F1 “Ferrari1000” at Mugello. She had her first solo creation for Pilbeam Dance in 2020, which was featured at WAM Festival 2021 & 2022.

In more recent years, she returned to work with Southpaw on “RUSH” Leicester 2022 and “This Is Us: The power of Performance” for the Rugby League World Cup . Kate started the role of Creative Coordinator at Southpaw in 2023 and in 2025 was appointed Company Manager.

COMPANY MANAGER

CATHERINE JOHNS

Catherine is Executive Director of Southpaw, and was previously Executive Director of Dance City, the dance development agency for North East England, and CEO of Kielder Observatory, successfully guiding the organisation through the pandemic and through a business planning process, creating a happy, vibrant, high-profile, and high-performing organisation for sustainable growth. Prior to that, Catherine was Director of the North East Centre of Excellence for Satellite Applications, building the fastest-growing space cluster in the UK. 

Catherine was instrumental in turning the North East Technology Park from "two buildings in a field" to a £100M pioneering science park, was Vice-Chair of the United Kingdom Science Park Association, a Board Director of the International Association of Science Parks (IASP), and founded the global network, Women in IASP. Catherine is a highly experienced non-executive director, formerly on the board of the Campaign for Science and Engineering and of iGiant, a Washington DC-based innovation accelerator, which spun out of President Obama's White House. She served on the national evaluation panel for Strength in Places, UKRI’s £300M place-based innovation fund and, in 2024, joined the Council of the British School at Rome, a multidisciplinary research institute, where, as Chair of the Nominations Committee, she led the successful search to succeed Mark Getty as Chair of the BSR.


EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

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    BILLY KEEN

    COMPANY DANCER

    Billy Keen trained at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, where he developed a strong foundation in contemporary technique. Alongside his formal training, he has a background in social styles including House, Hip Hop, Locking, Popping, and Waacking, which continue to influence his movement and performance practice.

    Billy is currently a company dancer with Southpaw Company and has performed in major productions such as RUSH Leicester, This Is Us! (commissioned by the Rugby League World Cup), Ride!, and Steam. He has also contributed to a range of research and development projects with the company, including digital R&D exploring motion capture and augmented reality technologies.

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    RION TAYLOR

    COMPANY DANCER

    Rion Taylor established his roots in dance through the hip-hop culture of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Nurtured by Bad Taste Cru, he joined Battalions Crew in 2011 and competed throughout the UK and Europe. Training under Akram Khan with the National Youth Dance Company inspired him to continue his exploration at London Contemporary Dance School, where he worked with Hofesh Shechter, Dane Hurst, and Punch Drunk, among other artists. Moving to Montreal in 2018 to work with RUBBERBAND, he has continued to represent the company internationally, as well as in the role of Artistic Coordinator. Rion has been working closely with Jessica Muszynski since 2020, establishing himself alongside the emerging choreographer as a dancer, performing in festivals within Québec. Rion identifies as a multi-disciplinary artist, and is always researching how to merge every aspect of his dance to elevate the potential for movement.

  • CONNOR GRIBBEN

    Connor Gribben is a dancer and visual artist based in Newcastle, UK, with 17 years of experience across multiple dance styles. Specialising in breaking, he represents two internationally recognised crews: Battalions (UK) and From Down Town (France).

    His work has taken him on UK and international tours, where he has continuously honed his craft and expanded his artistic horizons. Alongside his competitive career, Connor pursued a degree in Fine Art at Northumbria University (2019-2020), where he began exploring the fusion of movement and visual art within his creative practice.

    Connor's creative work blends dance, visual art, and wearable art into a distinctive, evolving practice. His current focus lies in exploring how wearable art can transform movement, enabling him to push the physical and conceptual limits of performance.

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    MEGAN HARMAN

    Megan Harman is a contemporary dance artist based in Newcastle. She completed her BA at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, and is currently a Masters student at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance.

     Megan joined Southpaw Company as a Professional Placement in 2025 and has since performed in major productions including RIDE, STEAM and 3.1. 

    Currently, Megan is a Southpaw IGNITE Associate and looks forward this next year of working with Southpaw Company.

    Megan's creative practice draws from her interest in human behaviour, inspired by surrealism, psychology and interdisciplinary collaboration. Megan seeks to make visible experiences that are often difficult to articulate

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    JON RODD

    Jon is a dance artist, body percussionist and creative currently based in Sunderland. Having recently graduated from London Contemporary Dance school, Jon has trained in a range of different styles and is continuing to develop his own contemporary percussive practice. Through his background as both a musician and dancer, Jon’s creative work stems from telling personal stories through rhythmic and expressive language.

    During his training, he co-founded the contemporary body percussion company ‘The Lab’ where he created work in collaboration with artists such as Domenico Angarano and Stefano Ancora. Jon has taken his solo works internationally performing in festivals in Denmark and Athens. Jon is an IGNITE Associate with Southpaw.

CREATIVE COLLABORATORS

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    PAUL TRICKETT ANIMATION

    ANIMATOR

    Paul Trickett is an artist and creative technologist living and working in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. He has skills in the fields of 3D and 2D animation & VFX.

  • black futuristic logo reading PROTO

    TOM SCARBOROUGH/ PROTO

    ADVANCED MEDIA PRODUCTION

    Located in Gateshead, North East England, PROTO is the first digital production facility of its kind in Europe. We partner with animators, film makers and games developers to help them create exciting and meaningful digital content. We offer 3Dcharacter, motion and audio capture in one unique place.