Kirby
Kirby is a mother, percussionist, drum facilitator, sonic healer and ex professional Dancer. On the back of her dance career, she discovered the drum in the early 90’s. With extensive studies in West African and Cuban music and gaining a diploma in the Therapeutic & Educational Application of the Arts in 2002, Kirby has spent over 25 years learning how to impart some of the intricacies, the joy and the spirit of drumming music as a source for healing and empowerment.
She’s put together performing bands, school projects, and ran her own large music and dance camps for women and children. She’s worked with story tellers and singers, takes the drum into festivals, prisons, corporate businesses, has run inclusion projects, refugee family groups, and has worked extensively with individuals of all ages that have difficulty with their learning and/or expression of the self.
Kirby plays for dancers both in traditional styles and also plays for sheer abandoned expression. She’s played up mountains, in caves, around roaring fires and in stone circles from sunset to sunrise, cleansing energy, invoking spirit and is renowned for releasing laughter and joy from the deepest of places!
She has a long history playing for shamanic ritual, ceremony and trance dance retreats. She believes passionately in the healing and magical qualities of the drum, using its ancient vibration to provide the bedrock for transformation, celebration, unity and connection to the universal source. She has the unique ability to respond ‘in the moment’ to the dancer and is known for her sonic healing.
In 2007 she co-founded DMAC UK, the Dance Music Arts Collective CIC based in Hamilton House Bristol. The company housed some 40 facilitators in a variety of diverse art forms ranging from African Dance and Ballet to Yoga and Salsa. These ‘InAlignment Studios’ saw around 1,000 participants passing through each week. Kirby ran weekly beginners and intermediate Drumming for Adults classes there for more than 10 years (now relocated to other venues around Bristol). She also currently teaches drumming to over 100 children per week in Bristol schools. Her forte is in her ability to bring instant rhythm out of individuals in a safe and integral way, using humour and dynamism to inspire and empower, nurturing and supporting the expression of our individual rhythms to build self-esteem, confidence and creating a sense of belonging and community cohesion.
Kirby feels at her best working with Women in all spheres. As well as working with Women on probation, since 2015 she has been holding weekly sessions with her colleague Chloe in Drum Song and Ceremony for Women diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder in HMP Eastwood Park Women’s Prison. These sessions are the most enjoyable and uplifting part of her week!
