From Matilda to Six, she is the movement director everyone wants so work with – and her work has lit up hit after smash hit. But, she says, it’s time this under-appreciated art received proper recognition

Ellen Kane is on a roll. When we speak, the choreographer and movement director has two shows running, Ballet Shoes at the National Theatre, and Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 at the Donmar. She has just finished Why Am I So Single?, the follow-up from the writers of Six, the smash hit about Henry VIII’s wives, and she’s in rehearsals for the revival of Dear England, James Graham’s funny and stirring depiction of Gareth Southgate’s tenure as England manager. If you watched all those shows in a row, you would have no idea the same person had a hand in them all, such is the art of the movement director, a job that many may not even realise exists. But it’s an essential one.

“Outside actually directing a scene, everything that moves on the stage is usually done by me,” says Kane, chatting backstage at the National. That means any dance, obviously, but also scene transitions, characters getting from A to B, and working with actors on how they connect with the audience. She helps make visible a character’s emotional experience. “So that we, the audience, can feel it,” she says. “I love to feel. I can watch something and appreciate it, ‘Oh that’s beautiful.’ But do I leave moved?”