Helene Cooper Blog

Busy busy New year's bee...

I'm curating a Dance on film Night at the Roxy Bar and Screen in Borough High Street - more information to follow.
23 01 08: Dance on Film night

A video art and dance film screening by emerging and established artists.

Video art works with an emphasis on movement and choreographic dance films have been selected for an informal screening, including pieces by Cheryl Wimperis, Maria Escarabajal, Helene Cooper and Oliver Reed.

Video installation from 7:45pm - feel free to dip in and out of this filmic observation of the choreographic in everyday life.
Programme starts 8pm.

See www.roxybarandscreen.com

Long time no electronic speak...

Well it has been a while since I've written my last blog and a lot has happened over the course of the last few months. A Masters at Laban is no easy ride but the constant realisations that it forces you to make during the course makes it a more than worthwhile endeavour.

Firstly, I have begun to completely re-address what it is that I do. Some theorists say that an artist never really knows what they do e.g. writings on Duchamp suggest that although a genius, he was a simple man who just did what he did and that it was the critics who generated the concepts and philosophy behind his work.

I find this not only intriguing but comforting also. The idea of being able to just create my work and present it as simply what it is in the hope that it is the recipients who make of it what they will; that I am simply delivering a communication and it is they who choose to interpret it in the way that they do. I think this approach gels well with a definition of a choreographer as someone who is gifted with intuition in visual presentation.

For it is all well and good saying that a choreographer/artists is entitled to just 'put work out there' and doesn't have to justify or explain what it is/means/says/represents but if that work is poorly presented or communicates nothing or has no point of reference in which the recipient can connect with it, then I believe the artist/choreographer is a poor artist/choreographer. It is being skilled in one's field that makes one a successful choreographer or as the former definition suggested, being skilled in one's field through the benefit of a gift - an intuitive sense that allows one a privileged outlook on visual representation.

What motivates?

"It is not so much where my motivation comes from but how it manages to survive."
That is indeed an interesting question for anyone, let alone a 92 year old female artist.

Quoting Louise Bourgeois.

Dance should be...

"Real action as dance - forcing oneself to feel the body - real life art".

Quoted from 'No Wind/No word'.

I was once told...

The world's most important people are all risk takers.

Perhaps this will encourage me in my ventures. It seems one doesn't get anywhere by playing safe.