Artistic Director & Founder.
Lee Smikle
Originally from Bradford, Lee discovered his passion for dance and performance at the late age of eighteen. He went on to train at the prestigious Rambert School of Ballet & Contemporary Dance. Following his training, Lee spent nearly a decade as a performer and rehearsal director with Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures, touring globally in many of their iconic productions.
In 2007, Lee transitioned from performing to focus on teaching, mentoring, and nurturing the next generation of dancers. As Creative & Pedagogy Lead, he taught and choreographed for many years at Trinity Laban’s Centre for Advanced Training (CAT) and The Place’s CAT program.
One of Lee’s most impactful achievements was founding Shoreditch Youth Dance Company (SYD) in 2010. Based at RichMix in East London, SYD was created to provide a creative home for aspiring young dance artists, offering opportunities to create, play, and learn from one another and industry professionals.
SYD was groundbreaking in its approach, being among the first contemporary youth companies to treat young dancers as professionals and future leaders rather than simply youth performers. The company provided professional-level training, empowering its members to train, lead, explore, create, and tour works driven by their own artistic voices.
Whilst an associate artist at RichMix in 2011, Lee created Free to Fall, one of the first dance/movement scratch nights in London. Through this platform, Lee worked with and connected hundreds of artists from around the world, hosting Free to Fall events in London, Brazil, and Sweden. He later went on to produce and support select artists, helping them develop, create, and tour their work.
After relocating to Brighton in 2017, Lee continued to run SYD, rebranding it as Smikle Youth Dance instead of Shoreditch Youth Dance. He retained key elements of the original SYD model, including its focus on community, creativity, mentorship, and offering a home for curious, talented young dancers and artists.
In 2020, Lee realized a long-held ambition by opening Smikle Dance Studio—a space to expand his creative work with SYD’s young dancers while sharing his passion for dance and movement with the local community, engaging both children and adults.
Associate Artist, Resident Choreographer & SYD Rehearsal Director
Natalie Ayton
Natalie, a Brighton native, trained at Rambert School of Ballet & Contemporary Dance and London Contemporary Dance School. She has had an exciting and varied professional performing career, working with companies such as Gecko Theatre, Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures, Wayne McGregor Company, Retina Dance and Candoco Dance Company.
Before moving back to Brighton, Natalie spent several years working at Sydney Dance Academy, where she led workshops for the Pre-Professional Year Course. She was also a teaching artist on the DancED team and was the Lead Teaching Artist for Mulkadee Youth Arts Festival for three years.
Natalie has been an integral member of the Smikle Team since 2010 creating innovative choreographic works with our SYD:B students, such as Maelstrom from ORIGINS ’22. She is also a lecturer at IC Theatre in Brighton alongside creating and producing her own creative dance works. Keep your eyes peeled for new work from Natalie!
Laura Careless
Resident Ballet Teacher
(shewolvesproject.com)
Laura Careless is a Brighton-based dance artist. Through dance performance and education, she advocates for the reclamation and rewilding of our physical instincts. Laura continues to perform and tour her personal solo work. Through Teaching, she seeks to empower students to move like themselves, prioritising their physical, mental and soulful wellbeing.
Laura is a graduate of The Royal Ballet School, London; the Ecole-Atelier of Maurice Bejart in Lausanne, Switzerland; and The Juilliard School Dance Division in New York City. Aside from teaching the BATCH programme at Smikle Dance Studio, she is a Curriculum Specialist for Juilliard’s K-12 department and is the Dance Education Consultant for Rambert.
Chess Dillon-Reams
Contemporary Teacher, Choreographer
(thehiccupproject.com)
Chess began her professional training with the Centre for Advanced Training at Laban, where she worked with Lee Smikle, Hofesh Shechter & Henri Oguike Dance Company.
Driven by human, social themes and real-life experience, Chess is inspired by work that seeks to connect to audiences regardless of their prior experience of contemporary dance or theatre.
Mathilde Navarro
Contemporary Teacher
(doppelgangercollective.ch)
Mathilde Navarro grew up in Geneva, Switzerland, but moved to Leeds to study at Northern School of Contemporary Dance. More recently, Mathilde has completed master’s degree in International Event Management with goals to combine an integrate her passion of dance and the arts with a more organisational and facilitative approach.
Mathilde is one of the choreographers, performers and founding members of the Doppelganger Collective based in Geneva, Switzerland. The collective is a cross-disciplinary, multi-lingual, response to contemporary affairs, including live performance, film, photography, art and more. Mathilde’s practice is rooted in the notion of instinct and risks as inspiration to develop new actions as evolutions of movements used in everyday life.
Joel O’Donoghue
Contemporary Teacher, Choreographer
(joelodonoghue.co.uk)
Joel has worked as a performer for a range of internationally renowned companies such as: Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal, Luca Silvistrini’s Protein, Ben Wright’s BGROUP, and Hagit Yakira Dance.
As a choreographer he has performed his own work at a variety of established venues both in the UK and abroad, such as Sadler’s Wells Lillian Baylis Studio, Tramway, The Place, Tripspace, and L’Escaut (Brussels). He was also commissioned to create a dance film work for Ballet Boyz, titled ‘Yes’, which premiered in 2021 as part of an online festival celebrating the life of Sir Ken Robinson.
In 2016 he received a Distinction in Performance Design and Practice, at UAL, and has since used these skills to design, source and construct set and costume for both his own work and other peoples.
Clair Thomas
Ballet Teacher
(ballet-brighton.com)
Clair trained at The Royal Ballet School, London and began her professional performance career with The English National Ballet in 1992. During her career she also danced with London City Ballet, Het Nationale Ballet in Amsterdam, Brussels Ballet in Belgium and The Michael Clark Company in London.
Clair founded her own school in 2015 - Ballet Brighton - where she teaches Royal Academy grades for children and young people and has weekly adult ballet classes for a range of levels. She has taught on the BATCH Pre-Vocational Programme for the past 3 years.
Oliver Robertson
Contemporary Teacher, Choreographer
(@o_robertson_movement)
Ollie trained at Northern School for Contemporary Dance for his bachelor’s degree and London School of Contemporary Dance for his master’s, alongside a work placement with James Wilton Dance Company.
Ollie continues to perform and choreograph with James Wilton Dance Company alongside developing his own movement practice. Taking inspiration from capoeira, martial arts and acrobatics, Ollie’s practice is focussed on developing the relationship between the body and the floor.