Les Oiseaux

In 2022, Lenio Kaklea’s life took an ecological turn. Since then, she has been thinking about the ways in which we can connect with other living beings through the prism of dance. After becoming interested in the variety of relationships between predator and prey in Agrimi (fauve), in Les Oiseaux she delves deeper into investigating animals whose behaviour is structured through spectacular repertoires of dance and song. 

The parade (or defence of territory) among birds allows the choreographer to reflect on the desire to be seen and heard: one of the driving forces behind our individual and collective identities. She explores this through a choreography in which she brings together a group of hybrid creatures, while their dance also brings out each one's lively individuality. In a form of a subtle play with the space, the movement of the dancers – as with migratory birds – takes on a planetary scope.  

Kaklea’s reflections on animals don’t stop with a utopian vision. In birds, the choreographer also finds a powerful figure of scrutiny: the ‘bird of prey’ perspective or vantage point from which they can survey everything. With Les Oiseaux, Lenio Kaklea also questions the construction of a surveillance society, which reinforces theatricality and in which freedom and enslavement are, more than ever, in a precarious balance. 

• Lenio Kaklea is a dancer, choreographer, and writer. She studied at the National Conservatory of Contemporary Dance in Athens (SSCD) before moving to France in 2005 with the Pratsika Foundation Prize, where she studied at the Centre national de danse contemporaine (CNDC) in Angers (FAC). Here she began to collaborate with prominent figures in the European dance world, including Boris Charmatz, Alexandra Bachzetsis, Claudia Triozzi, Emmanuelle Huynh, and Lucinda Childs. Since 2009, Lenio Kaklea has been developing choreographic projects using a variety of media, including dance, performance, text, and film. An important part of her work is the project Practical Encyclopaedia (2016–2019) in which, during her travels through different peripheral European areas, she collected almost 600 local stories that discuss the specificity of their tellers’ identities.