Helen Calcutt is a dance artist, choreographer, and award-winning poet based in the U.K.

As a dance artist, she works with specialisms in choreography, cross-arts, facilitation, and performance for theatre, live contemporary work, and site-specific productions. She has created and performed for acclaimed organisations including The Birmingham Royal Ballet, Autin Dance Theatre, Sonia Sabri Company, The Place (London), ME Dance Co., Apple & Made in LND, Midland’s Actors Theatre, Def Motion, Vamos Cuba, and The Birmingham Int. Dance Festival.

Helen’s practice also seeks to utilise text and verbal sound as underscores for movement. She is Artistic Director of ‘Beyond Words’, a ground-breaking interdisciplinary project exploring text-to-movement translation. She is currently researching a dance adaptation of Max Porter’s novella ‘Grief is the Thing with Feathers’, supported by The Birmingham REP, One Dance U.K., and Arts Council England.

The author of three volumes of poetry, Helen’s pamphlet ‘Somehow’ (Verve Press, 2020) was a PBS Winter Bulletin Pamphlet, and Poetry School Book of the Year. Her anthology ‘Eighty-Four’, created in aid of the suicide prevention charity CALM, was a Saboteur Award shortlist, and a Poetry Wales Book of the Year (2019). Helen’s new collection, ‘Feeling all the kills’, will be published in Spring 2024 by Pavilion.

Helen’s writing has been funded by The Society of Authors and Arts Council England. She regularly facilitates for Writing West Midlands, N.A.W.E. The Poetry Society, The Poetry School, and HAY’s Young Women’s Writer’s Programme. She was one of six poets selected to perform in the Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony 2022, directed by Iqbal Khan and choreographed by Corey Baker.