Downtime with Botis Seva & Lee Griffiths

DOWNTIME - interviews with dance artists & arts leaders, talking about dance & the arts

For this episode of DownTime I was so pleased to be able to talk with Botis Seva and Lee Griffiths.

Botis is a dance artist, choreographer and director working in contemporary dance, physical theatre and hip-hop – he is the AD of HipHop Dance Theatre company – Far From the Norm.

Lee Griffiths is the Creative Producer of Far From The Norm, and also, alongside Joseph Toonga and Emily Crouch , runs Artists 4 Artists the UK’s first artist-led Hip Hop theatre initiative.

Lee and Botis also happen to be a family, and I zoomed into their living room in May 2020 to see how Downtime was shaping up for them.

We talked about the plus sides of having a relatively new show paused half way through a tour, the place of hip-hop in the wider dance sector, and his Olivier Award - which clearly I'm more impressed by than he is!
Enjoy!
*Please Note: this conversation took place on May 21st 2020, just four days before George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis by white police officers. So we didn't get to talk about this, the wave of energy that it gave the Black Lives Matter movement, or the need to reflect that it has bestowed upon us all. Botis, Lee and I discussed recording a little part 2 to be able to incorporate their thoughts on all of this, but decided that this episode reflects the time it was made well - so we’re leaving like it is. We do however hope we’ll get to do a part two on another occasion.