The Body Knows: Botis Seva and the Discipline of an Original

Botis Seva makes work that moves like memory – circling, surging, refusing to settle. The founder and artistic director of London-based dance company Far From the Norm at only 19 began as a self-taught bedroom dancer in Dagenham, absorbing movement without a conservatoire in sight. What he built from that foundation is entirely his own: visceral, rooted in lived experience, and shot through with grief, race and resilience.

His 2018 work BLKDOG won an Olivier Award and established him as one of the most urgent voices in British dance, with the New York Times calling him “a major new talent”. Since then he has collaborated with director Jonathan Glazer on an Alexander McQueen campaign, worked with stage designer Es Devlin, and in 2021 was named one of ten recipients of the inaugural Chanel Next Prize.

His latest touring work, Until We Sleep opened at the Muffatwerk in Munich in April 2026, with Sing Child Sing having a world premiere at The Lowry in Salford later in the year. BLKDOG, meanwhile, continues its life on stage: after dates at the Cyprus Contemporary Dance Festival and Theatre Heilbronn this spring, it heads to the Helsinki Festival in the autumn.

We met the founder to discuss building Far From the Norm, and what it takes to turn a singular creative vision into a company the world wants to watch.

You started Far From the Norm at nineteen with no formal training. What were you working from?

I started as a bedroom dancer – you watch DVDs, videos, practise. That’s how I started. I was at the local youth club every day, going out to open classes, coming back and practising. I just loved moving. That was my first love. Then when I got introduced to hip hop culture, to dancehall, to contemporary, I started experimenting, bringing people in to try things. 

Breakin’ Convention – the Sadler’s Wells annual festival of international hip hop dance theatre, founded in 2004 – was already a significant platform by the time you attended in 2011. What did it open up for you?

Seeing all these international companies who had really pushed their art form, that was a game changer. It wasn’t just that they were moving, it was that they’d brought an intellectual craft to the form they loved. Like an architect building a house, there’s a craft to it. That idea excited me: let me figure out a craft of my own, and not lose the dancing in the process.

BLKDOG is raw and very personal. How much of what you make is autobiographical?

All of it. In 2017 I became a dad, and so much shifted. Before that I was a free creative soul. I went into a significant spiral, trying to figure out who I was as a father, as a human, not just as a maker. BLKDOG was about being in the grip of depression. Feeling low, drowning in thoughts, questions about suicide and how that affects the people around you. I couldn’t get to the point of speaking it, so I had to physicalise it. It wasn’t until people watched it that I understood how vulnerable it actually was.

Then came the Olivier. Does recognition change what you make?

I was delighted, of course, but it also brought on pressure. The show was only thirty minutes long and suddenly I had a full stage and an hour to fill. I’ll never forget the best piece of advice that someone gave me: “Only make it longer if you have more to say”. And I did have a lot more to say. 

You have worked with a range of creatives from Jonathan Glazer on the Alexander McQueen ad to Es Devlin. What does collaboration give you?

I met Jonathan Glazer when he did a project during Covid, filming dancers in their houses. A few years later he brought me onto the McQueen campaign to help with movement direction. My job was working with the models – some very young, quite nervous – directing how they move. Running on set, saying: try this, try that. What that gave me was an understanding of how broad movement language is. I was used to choreographing my own work; this was something else. And watching Jonathan work was incredible: he paints pictures before he gives any direction. You can see the shots forming in his mind. Similarly with Es Devlin. Those kinds of collaborations teach you that movement is not just dancing – it’s so much more than that.

Your work is rooted in a very specific experience of Britain. Tell me about that.

I was about twelve when we first moved to Dagenham, it was predominantly white with very few Black or Asian families. The English Defence League was active in the area and there were spaces you simply didn’t go to. My first work, House of Hooligans, came out of that world – British pub culture, football, Black and Brown boys navigating that environment. 

Race is always in my work because it’s always been in the experience. But it also built resilience. I was raised by a single mum who had migrated from Angola and Congo when she was young. She wore her culture on her body. That idea – keeping yourself intact no matter the noise around you – that came from watching her.

And internationally? Does that specificity travel?

The more specific it is, the more universal it lands. People recognise the feeling even when the context is entirely different. That has always been true.

Tell me about the new work, Sing Child Sing.

I’m making a solo – just me, no company. I’m going back to being a bedroom dancer! The piece is about my relationship with my dad. I never grew up with him and I’ve been carrying that sense of rejection, of abandonment. Now, having children of my own and being a father myself, I feel like I need to find a way to move on. I started therapy last year in order to make this piece, and what I found is that the only way I can really express these feelings is through my work. BLKDOG was so dark because I was hiding inside it. Ten years on, I can’t hide in the same way.