Helen Calcutt
ABOUT THIS CLASS
Crowy, jazzy contemporary class to a backdrop of joyful music. Dancers will aspire to both grounding and flight, with a focus on musicality and precision, combining gesture with fluid, expansive choreo. Expect to wholesomely warm into the body, followed by playful improv tasks, patterning with travelling, and a juicy routine to finish!
Helen’s professional class brings Cuban Rhythms into the Contemporary space. Dancers are invited to explore sensual rumba and salsa pulses within the body, playing with isolations, rotations, and grounding within the scope of improvisation. The connections we discover through the dynamics of partner-work (with interchangeable lead and follow) are also explored. Expect playfulness, expansion, movement jams, and full-bodied, high-energy dance phrases focused on skilled footwork, Timba musicality, and the circular fluidity inherent to the Cuban salsa style.
ABOUT HELEN CALCUTT
Helen is a dance artist, choreographer and poet based in the U.K. Trained in Cuban Rhythms and contemporary dance, and with a background in Commercial dance, she works with specialisms in choreography, facilitation and performance, devising and sharing movement for theatre, live works, site-specific productions, and indie film, across the U.K. and internationally.
The author of three volumes of poetry, Helen’s practice also seeks to utilise text and verbal sound as an underscore for new movement. She is the Artistic Director of ‘Beyond Words’, a new interdisciplinary project exploring modes of translation: from poetry, into movement. She was awarded a DYCP from Arts Council England (2021-22) to expand on this research. Her work continues. She was one of six poets selected to perform at the Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony, in 2022.
To date, Helen has collaborated with The Birmingham Royal Ballet, Autin Dance Theatre, Sonia Sabri Company, The Place (London), Apple, Midland’s Actors Theatre, Def Motion, ME Dance Company, Vamos Cuba, The Birmingham REP, and The Birmingham Int. Dance Festival.
