Richard Pye, 2024. Photographer: Jo Brent
Auto Italia is pleased to present Bystander, a new commission by UK-based dancer and choreographer Richard Pye.
As Auto Italia’s inaugural Participation Artist-in-Residence, Pye is working with queer communities across East London to develop a new body of work that centres movement and performance as tools of resistance, empowerment, and embodied collective care.
Grounded in Pye’s choreographic practice, Bystander examines the politics of witnessing, the dynamics of intervention, and the urgent realities of trans and queer safety. Developed in a time of intensified scrutiny and systemic rollback of TLGBQIA+ rights — marked by recent judicial and legislative attacks — the project acts as a critical site for embodied resistance, reflection, and solidarity.
Launched in May 2025, the project will unfold over a six-month period through a programme of workshops, panel discussions, and a collaborative rehearsal process, culminating in the co-creation and delivery of a programme of new performances at Auto Italia between 1–2 November 2025 (with further details TBA).
A key aspect of Bystander is its intergenerational framing, which weaves the experiences and cultural memory of both younger and older TLGBQIA+ communities into the development of the work. Attending to the relationships between generations, the project draws on a broader continuum of queer and trans resistance. Combining movement, discussion, lived experience and collaborative research, Bystander situates contemporary experience within longer histories of solidarity, struggle, refusal and survival. The project will engage its participants, performers and audiences in a rich, process-led exploration of care, accountability, and movement as a transformative space for political and communal expression.
Bystander also marks the launch of Auto Italia’s new Participation Artist-in-Residence programme, an initiative supporting artists to develop new work in close collaboration with local communities through our existing network of partner organisations. Each six-month residency invites artists to embed themselves within Auto Italia’s engagement programme, cultivating sustained relationships through workshops, discussions, mentoring, focus groups, and feedback sessions. Grounded in co-design and shared authorship, the programme ensures that community voices are meaningfully woven into both the process and outcomes of Auto Italia’s cultural work.
Each residency culminates in a public presentation of new work shaped by the ideas, experiences, and priorities of its participants. In doing so, the programme offers a platform for communities to shape and author ambitious, high-quality artistic work that reflects the forms of representation and access they wish to see within cultural spaces.
Bystander is commissioned and produced by Auto Italia, with support from The National Lottery Community Fund and Arts Council England.
Richard Pye (b. 1994) is a contemporary dancer, choreographer and facilitator whose practice is grounded in improvisation, physical rigour and complex contact work. Their work explores the radical potential of movement as a tool for communication, learning and liberation. Richard’s choreography centres instinct, humanity and the individual experience, celebrating the wealth of sharing space, beauty and presence with other bodies, brains and baggage.
They have performed nationally and internationally with choreographers and companies including James Cousins, Studio Wayne McGregor, Lea Anderson, Russell Maliphant Company, Rosemary Lee, Tim Casson, Stefano Poda, Nina Davies and Gareth Chambers. Performance highlights include Sadler’s Wells, Somerset House, Theatre de la Vie, Frieze, Matt’s Gallery, Transmediale, Lyon Biennale, GDIF, The Place, FIERCE, Transform, Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival, Teatro Regio di Torino, Venice Biennale, New York City Center, The Joyce, Tate Modern, Tate Britain, the V&A and the Lyon Opera House.
Their choreographic and movement direction spans stage, screen and socially engaged contexts, including music videos and dance films for artists such as Little Mix, Bob Vylan and Juri Xi. Richard has directed large-scale community works including the Commonwealth Games Baton Relay Closing Ceremony in Ipswich, The Boys, and multiple productions for Kickstart Company, where they were formerly Artistic Director.
They have collaborated across live art, fashion and film with Afra Zamara, Eva Rothschild (with work exhibited at the Venice Biennale), Imogen Knight and James Massiah, and have worked as a movement director for Vogue Italia, Gay Times, Selfridges, Ice Watch and Stonewall.
Beyond performance, Richard has presented a weekly radio show on Camden Radio and hosted an interview series for Southbank Centre featuring MIA, Ashley Walters and Princess Nokia. They have led and contributed to panels and public talks at Southbank Centre and The Place.
Richard trained at London Contemporary Dance School at The Place and completed full-time study in Ballet and Contemporary Dance at Purchase College, New York.
