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Alchemy Dance Company

ALCHEMY DANCE COMPANY was founded in 2005 by Marchant Birch. He brought together dancers from a diverse range of cultural, musical and dance backgrounds. The fusion of this range of experience with Marchant’s renowned smooth style brought about an exciting and fresh concept in salsa training and choreography. Influenced predominantly by New York Salsa/Mambo, Ballroom, African and Jazz dance, the focus of Alchemy is strong technical training, the PROCESS of creating dance, and ultimately transforming individually and collectively as dancers.

Now representing Alchemy Dance Company as a couple, husband & wife team Marchant & Davina are known for their captivating performances, world-class choreographies, and excellent teaching methods. They are in high demand to perform and teach around the UK and internationally.

Teaching the Teachers... Over the years many salsa instructors have trained with Marchant & Davina at some point in their dance development. Such is the standard of their teaching and depth of knowledge, many salsa instructors, teachers of other forms of dance and trained dancers are regularly found at their Academy, training bootcamps (MAD Salsa Bootcamps) and in the Alchemy Performance Team.

TIMELINE OF ALCHEMY DANCE COMPANY

2005 Marchant and Davina together formed Alchemy Dance Company. They took both their past dance experience and combined the techniques and methods for the performance company. Originally a team of four dancers with Steven Abbiw and Simone Mowen, they trained together for a year before performing.


2006 Marchant & Davina launched Alchemy Dance Academy, giving the salsa public the opportunity to improve their dancing by way of the Alchemy method of dance training. For 2 years they ran the Academy by way of intensive courses and workshops at different venues around the south.


2007 They released their first instructional DVD 'Alchemy Way Partnerwork', which, produced in two versions, was the UK's first On2 instructional DVD.


2008 Alchemy Dance Academy opened at its residence in Basingstoke, Hampshire, where students travel from far and wide to learn the Alchemy Way.


2010 saw the launch of their unique and exciting dance training concept - the MAD Salsa Bootcamp weekends. This was brought about by demand from dancers who live too far away to train regularly with Marchant & Davina. The MAD Salsa Bootcamps were residential training weekends, each designed for a specific level and exclusively taught by Marchant & Davina. There were 33 MAD Salsa weekends between 2010-2019, which were hugely popular with dancers travelling from all over Europe and as far as the USA. The most recent Bootcamp was in Trinidad.


2012 Marchant & Davina started the performance branch of Alchemy Dance Academy. The Alchemy Performance Team has performed at salsa events all over the UK to rave reviews. See debut performance video.

2017 Alchemy Dance Academy classes switched entirely to Salsa On2/Mambo. Previously both On1 & On2 were taught. This switch made us the largest On2 school in the UK. 

2020 When Covid 19 shut down the world as we knew it, Alchemy was one of the first companies to launch online. With a huge comprehensive On Demand tutorial service as well as Live Zoom classes, Alchemy Online now gives people from across the world direct access to Marchant & Davina's teaching.

Read Marchant & Davina's interview in SalsaMag.

Alchemy Dance Company Founder Members

STEVEN ABBIW & SIMONE MOWEN, Founder & Former Members of Alchemy Dance Company

Alchemy Dance Company originally formed as a group of four dancers in 2005 - Marchant, Davina, Steven Abbiw & Simone Mowen. They trained and performed together until 2007 when they disbanded due to outside work commitments. Those 2 years as a company were very special times when the four formed an extremely close bond of friendship which continues today. Steven and Simone are still considered very much part of the Alchemy family. They both continue to dance and work in the salsa community on a part time basis.

Visit our Gallery for videos of performances by the original Alchemy four!

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