HOW THE BODY SPEAKS

choreographer | movement director | poet

Helen Calcutt

Helen Calcutt is a choreographer, movement director, and award-winning poet.

Her boundary-breaking work across dance, theatre, literature, and screen explores the physical life of language and how the body speaks, cultivating instinct, form, and character in movement.

Recognised for staging transformative atmospheres in live performance, her practice is defined by rigorous physicality, a distinctive visual sensibility, and a fearless attention to the human story.

Helen’s dance making spans opera, film, live performance, and artistic research. She is Artistic Director of dance-theatre company Beyond Words.

With a training background in theatre, contemporary, and commercial dance, she has engaged in international commissions from leading creative institutions → including: the Birmingham Royal Ballet, RBC, Birmingham Opera Company, Opus, Apple T.V., Total Insight Theatre, FABRIC Dance, and more.

She is the founder of Hypha, a pioneering codified language for embodying and articulating text.

Her dance adaptation of Max Porter’s Grief Is the Thing with Feathers received a major production grant in 2026 and will tour internationally across 2027–28, supported by Arts Council England, One Dance U.K., University Centre Leeds, FABRIC Dance, produced by The Middle Floor.

She is the author of three volumes of poetry, including the celebrated Somehow and the Pavilion title Feeling All the Kills, described as “radical, revolutionary, and fearless in depicting women as sexual and maternal” (Zoë Brigley).

Helen is also a mental health activist and speaker. In 2023, she was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters by Loughborough University in recognition of her contribution to the arts and mental health advocacy.

“THE EDGE IS WHERE THE WORK LIVES.”

One Dance UK