Helen Hale wants you to dance in the streets
This Sat., Jan. 15, she’ll be performing at Dashboard Co-Op’s third exhibition of artists.
- Courtesy of Helen Hale
- Helen Hale performs at Convergent Frequencies
Local dancer and choreographer Helen Hale impressed the crowds at Convergent Frequencies last year with her precarious, stunning dance performances atop shipping containers in the Old Fourth Ward. This Sat., Jan. 15, she’ll be performing at Dashboard Co-Op’s third exhibition of artists. Alongside work by Patrick Filbotte, Kombo Chapfika, Johnathan Welsh, Duncan Shirah, Katy Malone, Jay Wiggins, Johnathon Kelso, and Sean Abrahms, Helen Hale will be dancing with fellow choreographer George Staib. The one-night-only exhibition gets started at 8 pm at 999 Brady Ave. and features musical performances from Fauxgerty and Young Fates.
We caught up with Helen earlier this week and she filled us in on her background and what to expect this weekend
Some of the projects you’ve been involved in use non-traditional spaces for dance. Can you explain a little about this and tell us why you’re interested in that?
Philadelphia is covered in murals and I while I lived there I was really affected by the way that the murals changed the landscape. Otherwise abandoned, empty, and forgotten spaces became instead incredible canvases for art in a way that completely redeemed and transformed them. I would walk through the city, turn a corner, run into one and wow!—it totally altered my experience. They shifted the outer and inner landscape for me. So I saw those murals day after day and I thought, “That’s what I want to do with dance.”
The proscenium stage can be an exclusive space in ways. It is one I love, but the very nature of having a show in a formal space means that many people will never see the work. It will only be seen by those who have heard about it, have the money to see it, and who make an intentional effort to see it. Since many people are not familiar with modern dance, that’s a bunch of folks who aren’t going to be packing the theater. So, in one way dancing in non-traditional spaces is an effort to bring dance to audiences, rather than trying to get them to come to me. It’s an attempt to educate and share. I love the idea that one could be going about their regular old day and bump into a crew of dancers on their way to work. Also, one of the beauties of non-traditional spaces is that they prompt non-traditional pieces because a given environment will necessitate and inspire a different kind of work.
An artist like me, at this point in my career, is rather forced to use “non-traditional” spaces because I can’t afford to do work in theaters. The top of shipping containers (the DanceTruck stage where I performed as part of the recent i45 collaboration), street corners, and warehouses are the accessible stages for poor dancers!
Really I just want people to be dancing in the streets. All the time. Everywhere that people are is a place where people could be dancing.