From Thursday August 13 to Sunday August 16, an improvised contemporary dance piece, entitled Still in the City, will be touring in Marylebone and Ealing.

Still in the City is an improvised piece that explores living in urban space; "strength, beauty and vulnerability".

The show will be at OPEN Ealing from Thursday August 13 to Saturday August 15, and The Cockpit in Marylebone as part of the Camden Fringe. The piece has previously toured in Norwich and Berlin.

Ensemble Dance Co. founder, Hayley Matthews, said: "The piece is very much a journey, different in each location because I work with a different cast in each city we tour to and build the work from the fabric and people of each place.

"For me it's about becoming aware of patterns and habits and realising them to get closer to who we are as dancers and as human beings. And about asking what happens if we start with stillness and being with ourselves and with each other."

From London, Still in the City will be showing in Plymouth in November, and three further venues in 2016.

The company are also working with film maker Al Simmons, leaving "a trail of films" (below) behind the tour, which are being exhibited online and as a collection at the Hostry Festival in Norwich in 2016.

Matthews also had an interview with The New Current ahead of Ensemble Dance Co.'s London tour.:

You all set for the London tour?

"Yes! Almost. I'm in the thick of all the marketing getting ready for the London run, when really I just want to get my dancing shoes on. But the London company is now set and rehearsals start on 4th August."

What does it mean for you to be bringing your show to London this summer?

"Well, I made this work as a Londoner exiting the city, when I came to live in Norwich for a while, so its me coming back home, which is really exciting."

Are there any nerves ahead of the festival?

"Definitively, but I like a touch of nerves and feeling excited, I can harness it to get my work done."

How did Ensemble Dance Company come about?

"I got to Norwich a few years ago, in an emergency exit from London after losing a job, and to be with people here, and I found myself landed in a place where dance was a very very small part. So I got dancing myself and found myself creating a company, I guess because there was nothing else there at the time.

"But a space that seemed baron of any work has ended up being a really fruitful place for me to work, I've found space and time to make my own work, which I didn't have in London, and having found that, here I am, with a piece that makes me more resourced at being a Londoner!"

You've just had your first tour, have you been surprised by the reaction you've gotten?

"Yes, we're in the middle of it, we're just back from Berlin. And yes I was really surprised at the reaction there, firstly to the challenges we had as the company there included two dancers who used wheelchairs or trikes and secondly by some really lovely feedback, where the audience picked up on exactly what I'm trying to do with the work, I hope for that obviously but I find it really overwhelming when dance actually manages to say the thing I'm trying to say, its amazing like that."

What has it meant to the company to have gotten such praise for your shows?

"It's spurred us on definitely, or me I suppose, as the maker and the only constant company member in this first work, but I'll touch in with the Berlin company soon and see how the work and the praise they received is settling."

When did you start putting the show together?

"If I really think about it I think the seeds were sewn in the moment I was moving from London to Norwich. But logistically I started gathering people here in the spring of 2013, and that was part of it, and then we started rehearsing at The Quaker Meeting House in Norwich in early 2014, which is a real quiet haven in the middle of the city, and I think that was when the spring really started bubbling (actually I borrowed the name from their Tuesday service - don't tell them! ). Then we had our first airing of the work at The Norfolk and Norwich Festival in May last year.

"And it develops and changes as I grow with it, take it to different places and work with different dancers."

Tell me a little bit about Still In The City, what can we expect?

"You can expect some dancing for sure, and I guess to step into a landscape where things are a little different, where the audience are encouraged to be in their bodies too, as we dance, instead of sitting as passive on-lookers and where the work is made live in front of you, because its improvised around a framework, and you're in that framework.

"There'll be some spectacular dancing I'm sure (which I can't take even half of the credit for), the company who have gathered in London are really quite something, I'll be dancing alongside Hung-Wen Chen from Taiwan, Emily Tanaka from Japan and Tal Weinstein from the States. We'll be posting little teaser video clips soon so keep an eye on our Twitter."

What was the inspiration behind your show?

"It was really a question I had about how I could inhabit my body, and in the city where things are so 'unatural' (I think really I'm a creature of the sea and the woods, which is strange for a Londoner). I realised, getting to Norfolk, how speedy I am, because things are so much slower here, and guessed that was the London in me, I've found out in the making of this work that its other things as well and also that this i s a big theme in our lives now, with so many of us living in cities. We're removed from the real in a way, and embedded in places that isolate, fragment and speed us up."

What has been the biggest challenges you've faced?

"The logistical things of being a touring company, even as light as the work is, which has meant I haven't had to cart a company around, working as I do for this piece with people based in each city I go to. But I'm working without a producer (gladly open to offers) and doing all the PR myself too, just longing to get back in the studio."

What was it about theatre that interested you so much?

"It's never been the lights and the performing in front of people that has drawn me (which terrifies me actually), but the physicality of being a dancer definitely does, I really love to move, and I love to make things, it means I have an expression for things going on in my body, my life and my head, which I find really useful and very nourishing."

5 words to describe your new show?

"Vulnerability. Beauty. City. Landscape. Framework."

What has been the best advice you've been given?

"It was from my Great Aunty, Celia Van Mullem, I lived with her off and on in my early and mid twenties and I used to sit on the end of her bed for the ten o' clock news and we'd have a chat. I asked her one evening if she had any regrets and she said, yes, I wish I had properly trained as a soprano singer (she was quite a singer already, she'd lark away along to radio 3 whenever she could), she said I wish I'd become a singer professionally, I think my life would have been different. I was working in an office at the time, and teaching dance a bit, and that really spurred me on."

Who has been your biggest inspiration?

"Fred Orton, who was my professor in Art History at Leeds University, he taught be how important context is, and a friend to, who's taught me a lot of things, definitely about getting on with things when things get really difficult."

What would you say has been the biggest lesson you've learnt so far?

"Hmm...maybe that incredible things can come out of the dark in us, and when you don't have a clue what you're doing And finally, what do you hope people will take away from your show? How to be still, in the city, how that could be for them and hopefully the ignition of a tiny spark or an idea, that they could dance too, or write or be more free as a London dweller."

The Cockpit Theatre, Gateforth Street, Marylebone, NW8 8EH - 020 7258 2925

OPEN, Green Man Lane Café, Singapore Road, West Ealing, W13 0EP - 020 8579 5558