The (H)ELProject, the Elementary Laughter Project, is a project about laughter and the belly as the center of emotions. 

The first edition of the project, The (H)ELProject # 1  took place at International Secondary School Georges Duby from october 2013 until mai 2014.

I gave a class one time per week and was sharing my tools : Bodywork, Contact-Improvisation, score, exercices of automatic writing and drawing and also visualisation and directing others. The students experienced that everybody can be choreographer. We went deeper in the subject of belly and emotions, I also lead them through exercices of physical theatre and view-points-practice, followed by discussions and sensing of their understanding of performance and choreography as well as their sens for future and dance...

"The way our culture has choreographed dance has always been reflective of the larger tendencies of how we are, as a society, deal with the unknown, the foreign, the spiritual and the animal. Conventional arrangements - those of the streets, school exams, chains of command and soldiering performers - impose rigid frames upon dance. These systems are the embodiment of fear and the cultural suppression of that which is governed neither by subjective nor collective will. Our premise must not be to constrain movement into set pattern, but rather to provide a cradle for movement to find it’s own patterns, over and over again."

Book of recommendations: Choreography as an aesthetics of change

by Michael Klien, Steve Valk, Jeffrey Gormly

You are the state and your ancestors’ mind : written patterns in your flesh and thoughts.

Assume responsibilities for your being and your imagination.

You are pattern, you are thought, none of which you have thought yourself.

There is a future to be created.

Your choreographies build our meaning and your creations

- a picnic, a child or a garden - matter to me.

Take time to sense your context.

It charts the boundaries of your imagination.

Only fools go marching on - the wise ones dance.

Aim - Steer - Hope

Book of recommendations: Choreography as an aesthetics of change

        by Michael Klien, Steve Valk, Jeffrey Gormly

The (H)ELProject # 2

The second edition of this project took place with a mixed group of participants (children, adults, professionals and amateurs) as a four-day workshop in october 2014 at La compagnie, lieu de création at Marseille.

It was an amazing experience to work with mixed ages and professional backgrounds.