[KEAF2011 Artist] Hellen Sky

Hellen Sky (Australia)

Hellen Sky is an Australian digital choreographer / performer / director / writer. Her inter-disciplinary work bridges dance, performance, theatre, and installation extended through new technologies. She collaborates with artists, scientists, performers, composers, academics, designers, writers, architects, interface designers and programmers to develop scores and technology systems that often use real time data generated by the body to effect the relationship between multiple media to form total choreographies for live performance and installations. Hellen studied at the Australian Ballet School and at the Victorian College of the Arts. She was a member of the Australian Performing Group (Pram Factory) and a founding member of Circus Oz. She was co-founder of internationally recognized new media performance company, Company In Space, 1992–2004 (with John Mc Cormick); Fellow of the Australia Council Dance Fund 2004–06; Nominee of the Leonardo MIT, Rockerfeller Ford Foundation Global Crossing Award 05; and co-founder and Artistic Director of Dancehouse, Centre for Moving Arts, Melbourne from 1991–2001.
"Hellen Sky’s transdisciplinary performances can be seen as the contemporary example of what Richard Wagner called Gesamtkunstwerk, or Total Artwork which aims to develop a non-linear live performance which poetically balances the capacity of story, dance, sound, image, light, spatial and costume design, and is mediated through real-time technology." (Melinda Rackham, Director, ANAT—Australian Network for Art and Technology)
"Hellen Sky is a visionary in the field of performance/technology truly a hybrid artist who creatively orchestrates physics, consciousness and aesthetics to create multi-dimensional transformative theatrical experiences … that integrates computer animation, motion capture and interactive technologies to poetically bridge the human and the technological, the mundane and the lofty." (Ellen Bromberg, Director, The Center for Interdisciplinary Arts and Technology, University of Utah, USA)
"Hellen is very active worldwide and has a visible global influence (in Oceania, Europe and Asia). Her work combines the latest tele-media technologies, strong theoretical and choreographic craftsmanship, and stunningly beautiful performances" (Nisar Keshvani, Editor in Chief, LEA; Editor of Leonardo Global MIT)