The Yonis Make Their Debut Album

Aim

The Yonis need your support to bring their debut album to life and take the next exciting step on their girl band journey.

Hello! 

We’re The Yonis: a girl band that dances. We take up space and make noise performing tracks in which we use our bodies as instruments, whilst celebrating and empowering female creativity and the possibilities of our bodies as powerful vehicles for expression.

Inspired by gig culture, we recreate through dance the shared feelings of joy one experiences watching live music. 

Our performances facilitate audiences- many of whom would not necessarily choose to watch contemporary dance- to become more than a witness, to abandon inhibitions and join us in the moment, enabling us to share the euphoria we feel when performing.  

We have been bringing this chaotic, collective, colourful take on dance around the country for two and a half years. This summer, we embark on our most ambitious project yet.  

‘They are a mixture of noisy RiotGrrrls and a comedic chorus’ – Josephine Leask at Womxn SRSLY'

Photos by Alex Gent, Nina Robinson at Womxn SRSLY, The Yard

Our Debut Album

Since our conception we have aspired to make an album. This year The Place, as part of Choreodrome, has given us a two-week residency. For the first time The Yonis will have space and time to work together for an extended period. A perfect opportunity to bring our debut album to life. 

Our album, like most, will be made up of individual tracks. These tracks will range in length from two to twenty minutes; have the potential to be performed by any iteration of Yonis; be able to fit different venues and events through ‘remixing’ and ‘sampling’; and allow The Yonis to function as a headline act, support band or anything in between. 

An album will allow us to articulate our work differently; challenging us to make work as a band rather than dance company. Pushing The Yonis into occupying gig and live music spaces, bringing us into contact with new and diverse audiences.

This album is part of a plan to develop the longevity and sustainability of The Yonis project. At the end of this residency we will have something concrete that we can take to promoters, venues, platforms and events. Something to act as a powerful springboard to enable future touring and revenue. A catalogue of tracks means that we are able to take on more gigs, especially those that come at short notice or with limited rehearsal time.

Photo by Alex Gent at Womxn SRSLY

Open Band Practice

Alongside creating new tracks, we will be developing the other strand of our work; Open Band Practice. This is a practice in which The Yonis facilitate a safe space for anyone – with or without dance training – who has the desire to dance, move and make noise without judgement. We do this through encouraging a joyful, supportive and self-celebratory atmosphere. 

At Brainchild Festival this year the artistic director, Marina Blake said of Open Band Practice that ‘The Yonis bringing the entire crowd out to dance in the field like a murmuration’ was one of her highlights. We created a space that day for over 50 people to find an uninhibited playfulness in moving their bodies and sharing space with strangers.    

We want to build on this experience. We want to be able to share Open Band Practice across spaces and communities. The Yonis aren’t just here to show you what a good time dancing looks like but to encourage you to act on inspiration and dance with us.

‘so many people have said it was their highlight to see you flocking across the field in the golden hour…Magical!’ – India Crawford (senior producer at Brainchild)

Photo by Chris O'Donovan at Stratford Innereast Festival

Our Work So Far:

The Yonis is collectively run by ten women who facilitate the involvement of over 40 other performers and collaborators. We are proud that The Yonis are made up of trained dancers, new dancers, childhood dancers, ex-dancers and ‘for-the-joy-of-it’ dancers. These changing formations of Yonis challenge us and our work to constantly shift, evolve and grow.

It is impossible to express enough gratitude for the input of each and every Yoni that has shaped our journey until now. 

In our work so far The Yonis have accepted commissions and invitations to perform at V&A Friday Lates, Brainchild Festival, Edinburgh Fringe, Lips Ball at DIY Space, Peckham Festival, a private party at Electrowerkz club, Brainchild Festival, Set Space Dalston, Yellow Days Festival, Secret Circus and London Science Gallery amongst many more. 

We have been Girl Band in Residence at Woman SRSLY, a platform for female identified and socialised artists, since their inception in 2017. This collaboration has given us the space to play and experiment with ideas at both The Yard Theatre and The Place, which has been instrumental in establishing how we want to work and be seen.   

We have achieved all this across continents and time-zones; on tight budgets in time pressured situations; juggling other work and day jobs with our determination to create spaces for a girl band that dances. 

Photo by Zbigniew Kotkiewicz at Chisenhale Dance Space

Photo by Alex Gent at Womxn SRSLY

Your Support: 

We really care about artists being paid for the work that they do and are always questioning how we can make The Yonis a sustainable project that is able to pay those involved. Choreodrome, and the time it gives us to reflect and redirect as an organisation, will be a pivotal moment towards achieving this goal. 

Until this point every penny that we have earned has been reinvested into the project – to pay for travel, buy costumes, hire rehearsal space and equipment, and pay for marketing materials. In order to make this two-week residency as effective as possible, allowing us to make our debut album and invest time into the longevity and sustainability of The Yonis, we need to pay each other. If we are successful in reaching our target, the 10 of us will each receive £500 towards traveling to the studio each day, feeding and accommodating ourselves, and getting paid for the work.

As part of Choreodrome, The Place has given us a commission to cover some costs and for the first time have decided to use our income to pay ourselves. As you can imagine with ten people that doesn’t stretch all that far, and it would be a massive shame if some of us had to miss out on this opportunity for financial reasons. 

Any support that you might be able to give to get the first major Yonis project off the ground would really mean the world to us. 

Photo by Alex Gent at Womxn SRSLY

This project successfully funded on 1st September 2019