Lenio Kaklea

Lenio Kaklea is a dancer, choreographer and writer, born in Athens, Greece, and based in Paris.

As a young dancer, she studies at the National Conservatory of Contemporary Dance in Athens (SSCD), where she is formed at classical ballet and American modern techniques and repertories, such as Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and Jose Limón. In 2005, she is awarded the Pratsika Foundation Prize and moves to France, where she studies at Anger’s CNDC (FAC) and starts her collaboration with prominent figures of the European dance scene, such as Boris Charmatz, Alexandra Bachzetsis, Claudia Triozzi, and Emmanuelle Huynh. In 2011, eager to extend her artistic practice, she completes the SPEAP program, an experimentation in arts and politics’ master directed by Bruno Latour at Sciences Po in Paris.

Since 2009, Lenio Kaklea uses a wide range of media, including choreography, performance, text, and video. Her artistic practice is influenced by feminism, psychoanalysis, and institutional critic. In her work, she explores the production of subjectivity through the organized repetition and transmission of movements, and seeks to reveal the intimate and marginal spaces in which we construct our identity.

An important strand of her work is the project “Practical Encyclopaedia.” Since 2016, traveling through the streets and pathways of different peripheral European territories, she has gathered nearly 600 unique stories that testify to the familiarity and diversity of habits, rituals, and trades that compose and distinguish these terrains. Different artistic forms see the light within this project (a solo dance piece, a quartet stage work, two publications, and two video installations).

Her work has been presented by different institutions and festivals throughout Europe, such as the Centre Pompidou, ImPulsTanz Festival, CN D Pantin, Lafayette Anticipations, Onassis Foundation, Milan’s Triennale, Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, documenta 14 – Public Programs, NEXT Festival, Passerelle Art center, PACT Zollverein, Les Presses du réel.

Along with her personal choreographic work, she is engaged in collaborations with other artists. In 2013, she pursues a solo collaboration with the American choreographer Lucinda Childs on the music of Ryoji Ikeda. A few years later, in 2016, she is invited as a curator at the National Scene of Brest and presents “Iris, Alexandra, Mariela, Katerina et moi,” a focus on contemporary Athenian female choreographic production. Soon after, in 2017, she accompanies the choreography of “Suite No 3,” a stage concert by Joris Lacoste and Pierre-Yves Macé. In 2019, she collaborates with the pianist Orlando Bass on the emblematic work for prepared piano “Sonatas & Interludes” by John Cage.

In 2019, Lenio Kaklea is awarded the Dance Prize of the Hermès Italia Foundation and Milan’s Triennale. In 2020, her work enters the collection of KADIST Foundation.