Quiet Beats – the dance workshop for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Young People in Wales will be running sessions during the summer holidays in Cardiff.
Quiet Beats was launched in 2021 by Jones the Dance and has seen the number of young people engaging in the dance workshop grow over the last 12 months.
The free dance workshops for ages 7+ will be held each morning from 8-11 August at the Deaf Hub (Wales), Newport Road in Cardiff.
The sessions are delivered by Deaf dance teachers and is supported with two BSL interpreters.
The sessions will be delivered by Deaf dancers Billy Read and Ariel Fung, who specialise in Hip Hop, Street dance and contemporary dance, with some freestyling too!
Quiet Beats – The Dance Workshop for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children will be held in Cardiff during August 2022. Photo: Kirsten McTernan 
Quiet Beats – The Dance Workshop for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children will be held in Cardiff during August 2022. Photo: Kirsten McTernan 
Quiet Beats – The Dance Workshop for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children will be held in Cardiff during August 2022. Photo: Kirsten McTernan
Over the week those involved will make something together to create a short mini dance show to share with their family and friends and the end of the four days.
Dance Artist and teacher, Billy Read is from Walsall and has been Deaf since the age of three, Billy was inspired to take up a career in dance, specialising in street dance styles and Hip Hop theatre. After founding the deaf dance crew Def Motion in 2011, Billy has performed and taught dance to d/Deaf and hearing people around the UK, as well as in France, Italy, Bosnia, Serbia, India, USA, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan. Currently, Billy is touring his show Forbidden Identity which focuses on life as a Deaf kid in a hearing world and is also developing a brand new Arts Council-commissioned show called Cog In The Wheel, which infuses dance with the Deaf poetry known as visual vernacular.
Ariel is a dancer who is profoundly Deaf and comes from Hong Kong, now living in Wolverhampton. In 2010, she co-founded Fun Forest, a Deaf dance crew based in Hong Kong, specialising in Hip Hop and Street dance styles, performing at numerous festivals and events in Hong Kong as well as in Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, and the US.
Ariel moved to the UK in 2017, where she has since collaborated with many other professional artists both Deaf and hearing, including Unlimited House of Krip, competing at mainstream Vogue Balls in Liverpool, Manchester and London. She has also worked as a dancer and teacher, as part of numerous Arts Council commissions, on R&Ds, performances at indoor and outdoor festivals, and school residencies around the country. Major highlights have been being a part of a music video shoot in Belgium in 2019, as the only Deaf artist and more recently her work and live dance sign song performance at the Paralympics Homecoming Ceremony on Channel 4.
Artistic Director for Jones the Dance, Gwyn Emberton said, “We are so pleased to be able to bring Quiet Beats back to Cardiff this summer. We launched Quiet Beats hoping that we can support young Deaf people who wanted to learn to dance. It is wonderful to see how this project is growing since we started online in the lockdowns of 2020 with so many young people dancing and having a blast. We are excited to see the amazing dancing that will happen this summer, in the week of workshops lead by two wonderful Deaf dancers, Billy and Ariel.”
Quiet Beats will be held at the Deaf Hub (Wales), Newport Road, Cardiff from 8-11 August, 9.30am-12.30pm. Suitable for ages 7+ who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing with BSL Support. Free workshop for attendees and their siblings and friends.
- For further information visit jonesthedance.com/quiet-beats