I started off as a singing scientist-sculptor who made dances. For me, choreographic structures set in motion ideas, experiences and collaborations. I believe that the willful coexistence of unlike things creates pleasure, magic, insight, and enough spaciousness to be open to the personal. What results is always a surprise; the unexpected is a delicious reward for attentiveness.
My projects are diverse, underpinned by this generous definition of choreography. To describe my last five full-length performances is to dive into multiplicity:
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- Praxis : a dance-theater satire based on unsolicited advice, Marxism and 1950s advertising
- Fox vs Kingdom : a puppet-satire-feast based on a violent medieval beast epic that skewers greed and hypocrisy while creating a wild, handmade world
- Darkling : a solo dance that evoked the medieval mind in a flickering, interactive light, all embedded in a kind of radio play of original poems and music
- Geographica : a site-specific sound and performance installation and dance duet based on 1880s American landscape painting, visions of the Middle East, and the sublime in dance, philosophy and poetry, with personal FM radios to hear it all
- Overlook : a solo performance in the form of a historical lecture about 1920s artists and utopians that turns into dance, poetry and memory
All these projects come out of a process of research and magpie collecting – historical, philosophical, narrative, visual, musical sources. I respond to and critique contemporary society, either through direct satire or by plunging us into another time, giving us a way to feel the difference. At the root level, I ask the urgent question: “How do we live? How do we continue?”
I am fascinated by the power of the voice, of stories, fables, epics. I am in awe of the insatiable need we have as human beings for narrative. I am enamored of archives, historical finds, of uncovering stories, both personal and ancient, and using those as bait: I try to give a clear thread for someone to hold onto, to follow the story from the past to today.
At the same time, more than ever, and in direct opposition to storytelling, I revel in the wordless, visceral power of abstraction, dance, and our raw, pure voices. The very “uselessness” of these seem so essential to me. Somebody in motion, in song: it’s so simple and yet so incredibly moving to us. Why?
So I create and nurture frames to make possible those physical, in-person connections, improbably overloaded with all sorts of things, and I invite people to take some time out, in this suspension of reality. On a good day, we might even find a state of grace, and a spark of shared surprise, and even, delight.
– Hélène Lesterlin, April 6, 2016