Meet Rubicon's Staff
Senior leadership team
Chief executive officer - Simon Morris
Simon has worked as a senior executive within various arts organisations for more than 25 years. He is particularly passionate about increasing the diversity of representation in the cultural industries and has focussed on increasing inclusion during all his previous roles.
Originally starting out as a freelance visual artist and designer, Simon became a director of the community arts organisation Coventry Artspace before moving into the performing arts via Salisbury Arts Centre and then working as the CEO of two charities supporting performers with learning disabilities. After relocating to South Wales in 2021, he initially worked for the national traditional music and dance organisation, Trac Cymru, before starting his current employment at Rubicon Dance.
Simon has a very broad professional knowledge of the arts after working and collaborating with many other artists across a huge range of disciplines and genres. He also moonlighted as a lecturer for more than 10 years, most extensively within higher education institutions but also in further education, lifelong learning, and professional development training.
Although Simon says his primary skillset will always be his drawing and painting skills, in addition he enjoys playing various musical instruments to different standards, including guitar, ukulele, and drums. He's also a keen Welsh learner, currently at intermediate level.
Education manager - Deborah Ford
Deborah is an experienced dance educator and manager, and accredited yoga teacher, with over 30 years in the professional dance sector. After training at London Contemporary Dance School, where she graduated with 1st Class Honours, Deborah joined its Postgraduate Performance Company, performing works by leading choreographers including Wayne McGregor, Henri Oguike, Mark Baldwin, and Siobhan Davies. She went on to perform nationally and internationally with companies including Earthfall and National Dance Company Wales, where she became a Senior Dancer and mentored apprentices. Across her performance career, she toured in over 40 original works.
Deborah spent 15 years at Northern School of Contemporary Dance (NSCD), teaching across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and contributing to curriculum and leadership development. She continues to freelance with NSCD as an MA tutor on the Professional Placement Scheme and remains a strong advocate for conservatoire dance training.
Since 2022, Deborah has been based at Rubicon Dance, where she is the Education Manager and leads the full-time BTEC Extended Diploma in Performing Arts (Dance Pathway). Her practice centres on inclusivity, excellence, and empowering the next generation to thrive in a demanding and evolving dance industry.
stakeholder manager - Tracey Brown
Tracey has come full circle because she started out as a student on Rubicon's full-time course, and she says it was there that she discovered her love for community dance and never looked back! She has worked for Rubicon since September 1996, developing her experience through 5 different roles – the first of which was Dance Development Worker and included leading dance sessions with a wide range of ages, abilities and backgrounds and within a wide range of community contexts.
In January 2025 Tracey began her new role as the Stakeholder Manager for Rubicon, which includes developing the Wales Wide Training Programme and working with twenty-eight partners organisations and hundreds of practitioners from across the Welsh national dance sector. She also oversees the activities of the team who lead our community programme, looks after our donors, writes funding applications, and develops links with sponsors and many of our valued funders. In her new role she is always looking for new connections with individuals and organisations to increase the reach of Rubicon’s community programme, to enable as many people as possible to participate in a dance session, whatever their ages, abilities or backgrounds.
There are many highlights during Tracey’s time at Rubicon, but she says that one stand-out project was the inspirational ‘Rubicon to Romania’ programme which engaged with deaf children in Craiova.
Operations Manager - natasha Gajda
Natasha is an experienced Business Operations Manager specialising in arts education, community engagement, and organisational management. She has built her career around creating systems and processes that improve efficiency while supporting creative work.
For ten years, she worked as a freelance singing and piano tutor, delivering lessons across Gwent and Bristol. During this time, she was contracted by Gwent Music and Bristol Beacon, which allowed her to work with a wide range of students while building a strong professional network across the arts and education sectors. Alongside teaching, she managed all aspects of her independent business, balancing lesson planning, scheduling, and financial administration.
She later joined Cardiff Council’s CF Music Education team, where she led administrative processes and introduced software solutions to streamline finance and customer relations systems. Her work focused on improving efficiency and supporting the team to implement more effective workflows.
Now at Rubicon Dance, Natasha works on refining internal systems, strengthening operations, and supporting long-term sustainability. She collaborates across finance, customer relations, and programme delivery, helping to align resources with organisational needs.
Natasha is passionate about supporting inclusive and engaging programmes that empower communities through the arts. She believes that well-structured systems and thoughtful processes help organisations thrive, ensuring that creative opportunities remain accessible and impactful.
facilitator team
liz colley - Education tutor
After gaining a Level 4 Diploma in Musical Theatre and a Degree in Dance and Performance, Liz has focussed her career on teaching and choreography. Alongside teaching our BTEC students here at Rubicon, Liz teaches Freelance around South Wales and has her own business running her own dance classes.
Her professional choreography credits include working with the Miami Dolphin's Cheerleaders, movement coach for Tom Hardy's film 'Havoc', choreographing for Netflix series and much more. Liz joined the Rubicon Dance team in September 2024 and is an Education Tutor on the full-time BTEC Level 3 Extended Diploma in Performing Arts (Dance Pathway) course.
Aisling Wallace – Dance Leader
Aisling trained at Northern School of Contemporary Dance and Edge Hill University, graduating with a BA (Hons) in Dance and Drama with Aerial Performance. She then completed a community dance apprenticeship with Rubicon Dance in 2020 and has worked as community dance leader ever since, both for Rubicon and as a freelance practitioner.
Her work currently includes running the GCSE Dance course at Rubicon, as well as devising and delivering a vast range of sessions for children and young people. She has also had training from Stopgap Dance Company enabling her to deliver their IRIS inclusive syllabus. Previously Aisling worked for Royal Ballet School on their Primary Steps programme and has co-created and toured a bilingual performance for under 5s around nurseries in Cardiff and Rhondda Cynon Taf.
Anwen Davies – Dance Leader
Anwen has worked at Rubicon since 2004. Over the years she has taught in many different settings but currently she delivers sessions in health settings, elderly homes, family sessions, high school and over 50's. Outside of work she is busy with her two boys.
Rhian Rogers – Dance Leader
Rhian graduated with a BA Hons Contemporary Dance Degree in 2017. In 2018, she completed a one-year apprenticeship in community dance with Rubicon and the Wales Wide Training Programme, where she worked to the 5 key areas of the National Occupational Standards for Dance Leadership.
Rhian has taught in different settings throughout her time at Rubicon but she currently delivers sessions for people aged over 60 on our development programme throughout Cardiff. She says she loves to see the positive impact that exercise has on the health and well-being of participants.
Sophie Batey – Dance Leader
Sophie has been working for Rubicon Dance since 2006. She has a degree in dance, PGCE in further education and completed an apprenticeship in community dance here at Rubicon.
Sophie currently leads a diverse range of classes in education, health, and out in a range of the different community contexts and venues with a wide range of ages and abilities. She enjoys having a rich and varied programme of work and seeing the positive effects that dance has on people's health and wellbeing.
Sophie has also delivered dance-in-education training to teachers and learning support assistants at various schools and events as well as nursery staff at private nurseries. Through these training events she has helped staff embed the expressive arts strand from the new Curriculum for Wales by equipping them with tools, skills, and ideas that they can implement in their own settings.
Co-ordination TEAM
outreach & engagement co-ordinator - Emrys BArnes
Emrys has been working within the community arts field for around ten years. He began his career as a theatre practitioner working in a variety of contexts including supporting refugees and asylum seekers with Welsh National Opera, facilitating education projects in Wales and Hong Kong, and developing experimental theatre in Wales and Eastern Europe.
Building on this creative practice, he has further developed his career by managing community arts programmes including at Span Arts in Pembrokeshire and NoFit State Community Circus in Cardiff, and has consolidated this experience through completing the MA Arts Management programme at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
Emrys is particularly interested in using Co-Production Methodology to ensure that publicly funded arts meet the diverse needs of people in our communities, especially those most affected by social and environmental injustice.
Fundraising co-ordinator - Lauren Williams
Lauren graduated from Cardiff Metropolitan University in 2016 with a BA Hons in Dance. Lauren has worked at Rubicon Dance ever since assisting with fundraising, particularly applying to trusts and foundations. Lauren loves organising events, especially the annual Rubicon Dance Schools' Festival which works with 60+ schools across South Wales. Outside of Rubicon, Lauren is a trained Latin American dancer who loves all things Strictly!
Administrator - Carmella Searle
Carmella has been working at Rubicon Dance since 2004 and enjoys working within the arts sector. Her job includes all areas of day-to-day administration for the company and overseeing the reception activities for our centre’s evening and weekend programme. She enjoys interacting with our members and their families on a weekly basis and says that it's great to see the joy and confidence that dance brings to many of our members.
Carmella is also our exams officer for Rubicon’s GCSE Dance course, which we have been delivering since 2020. If you have any enquiries about Rubicon’s programme, then Carmella is a great person to ask!
Outside of work Carmella enjoys cooking, sports activities with her son, and days out/holidays with her family.
MAINTENANCE - JOHN hale
John came to Rubicon Dance in the 1990s to take additional ballet classes. In 2004, he joined the team as an evening receptionist, providing front-of-house support and helping maintain a welcoming environment for students and visitors. A few years later, he began assisting with building maintenance, contributing to the day-to-day upkeep of the facilities.
Today, John continues to support Rubicon across reception and maintenance, and occasionally teaches adult ballet classes, drawing on his longstanding connection to the organisation and his background in dance.
CLEANER - LYNDA WALSH
Lynda has worked at Rubicon since 2010, covering all aspects of cleaning in the building over 5 days a week. Lynda also attended one of our over 50's class when she turned 50 in 2011 and was nicked named 'baby spice' of the group!
Outside of work Lynda also works part time at Tremorfa Pantry as a Volunteer Coordinator. In her spare time, Lynda loves to jet off as often as she can, but when she is in the country she enjoys walking, gardening, and spending time with her grandchildren.