about

I will tell you a story. I began as a contemporary dance artist in Seattle, WA in 1980. The spirit of community and nature of collaboration I had with colleagues during these years was seminal. Christian Swenson and I formed a duet company and we toured throughout the US in my grandmother’s ’69 Plymouth Valiant. We had impeccable timing and an enormous zeal for life, adventure and dancing. This defined for me what it is to dance with someone and birthed my choreographic and improvisational mind.

I coupled this with becoming certified in Laban Movement Analysis in 1985. The Laban work is an inexhaustible medium, which gives me a language to originally innovate form. This time was also my initial foray into the inclusion of voice, sound, song, text and set into my work. These processes initiated the path of my artistry.

I am an independent artist, a performer, choreographer, improviser, mentor and teacher. And I am a constant student of myriad somatic practices.

And then…somewhat like Alice down the rabbit hole, I found myself living in New York City, Berlin, and Amsterdam from 1988–1994. This profoundly shaped me as an artist. I wrestled with cultural differences, witnessed the dismantling of the Berlin wall, and was on faculty at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam from 1991–1994. Participation in the European contemporary dance milieu informed my aesthetic. In 1994, I returned to Canada, the country of my birth, and completed an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies in the School for Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University in 1996.

I have always sought out diversity in work contexts: urban, rural, community-based populations, academia, and the professional milieu. I have traversed Canada from the Yukon to the Queen Charlotte Islands to Calgary to Regina to Quebec City and Montreal, dancing. This diversity informs my aesthetic and my understanding of how my work is accessible to a public.

The accessibility is embodied presence, the recognition of our commonality, the collective unconscious.

Collaboration is pivotal to the nature of my work and has deepened in my years in Canada. An ongoing collaboration with composer James B. Maxwell is instrumental to my choreography. The work created is the composite of both our imaginations. I have also performed with improvisation artists Marc Boivin, Peter Bingham, Lin Snelling and Peggy Lee. Further collaborators include lighting designer James Proudfoot, sculptor John Noestheden, actors Andrew Olewine and Billy Marchenski, and singer Carol Sawyer.

Internationally my work has been presented throughout the U.S. the U.K., the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Croatia. Numerous artist in residences and commissions have supported the creation and dissemination of my work and my work has been funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council, Link Dance Foundation, the Canadian Embassy in Bonn, private donations and the King County and Seattle Arts commission. In 2020, I received the Isadora Award for my outstanding contribution to the BC dance milieu and, in 2022, I received the Lola McLaughlin Legacy Award.

I am also a dahlia nut and have grown 18 varieties of dahlias in public spaces for over 15 years.

 

There are multiple meanings in any given moment, dependent upon the point of view of the experience. This is the pathos and beauty of our existence and can render any heart and mind tender. It is this which compels me to create my work, and it is with this that I go out the door every morning to meet all the incidents of a single day.

Everyone’s story meets, sometimes colliding and careening, in unarticulated moments as simple as being jostled on a crowded bus. This exposes humanity. It is heartbreaking and mind opening and a basic premise of my work.

Through a layering and cross-referencing in my processes there is an energetic transmission through space and time in performance and each viewer receives their own story. Hearts and minds are touched in a way unique unto themselves, and there is the potential for a sharing of experience.

 

The approach is accessible, the process is transformative. With forty years of experience in myriad contexts throughout North America and Europe, my teaching is steeped in numerous somatic and spiritual practices, the primary influences being Rudolf Laban, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, F.M. Alexander, Anat Baniel and Shambahla Buddhism.

Whether you engage in martial arts, athletics/fitness, yoga, Pilates, the arts, therapeutic/bodywork practices, dance education, embodied leadership, are recovering from injury, or simply wish to deepen your presence within your body, this work will enliven your movement practice and life.

"Helen comes from a place of deep embodiment. Her work is rich, dynamic, highly creative and beautifully layered revealing her breadth of understanding."

Suvali Zekas, Pilates based movement therapist and Bodynamic Practitioner

I am a certified Laban Movement Analyst and a somatic movement educator.

My movement patterning and Laban Studies workshops are intended for, and accessible to, a broad population.

I am available for one on one sessions, which are personally designed to address your needs.

I offer classes and workshops in contemporary training, improvisation and composition for the professional dance milieu and pre-professional dance training programs.

I offer facilitation and mentorship to creative projects.

I have also taught, facilitated and directed in many community-based populations such as the Roundhouse Community Dancers, Polymer Dance, Carnegie Centre, Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre, GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre (mixed-ability work), inner city high schools, and Youth in Motion and Continuum Dance at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts.

I ask students to think with their bodies, sense with their minds and feel with their breath. I am curious about the presence of mind, attention, intention and how these manifest in motion. I am known for my clarity, refinement, depth in detail and my humour.