Lenio Kaklea

A turning point in my artistic practice emerged around 2022. Until then, my work had been rooted in autobiography, autofiction, and the social and political dimensions of movement, within a choreographic language closely tied to feminist struggles. Gradually, I felt the need to move beyond documentary approaches toward a postdramatic and hybrid stage language, bringing together feminist and postcolonial perspectives through diverse movement materials.

This shift marked the beginning of an eco-critical cycle with Αγρίμι (Fauve) in 2023 and “Les Oiseaux” (The Birds) in 2025, both driven by an urgency to address the disappearance of living worlds, the contradictions in our relationship to nature, and the ways these tensions are inscribed in the body.

“Les Oiseaux” (The Birds) grew out of a persistent image that had accompanied me for years. Birds occupy a central place in our imagination: they embody freedom, lightness, and utopia, but also cruelty, predation, conflict, and ecological loss. This ambivalence became the foundation of the work, which seeks to move beyond a romantic vision of birds in order to engage with their darker dimensions.

My starting point was The Birds by Aristophanes, which tells the story of two humans escaping war and corruption to found a new society among birds. Despite its anthropocentrism and misogyny, the play remains relevant in its central question: how can we reimagine forms of collective life when existing human systems begin to fail?

I later expanded my references through Les Guérillères by Monique Wittig, whose hybrid female figures—part human, part animal—opened up ways of thinking the body through uncanniness. From there, I explored questions of coexistence and hybridity: how bodies move together while preserving their singularity, and what it means to inhabit a non-human perspective. 

Finally, the encounter with scientist Thierry Aubin was decisive for the project, opening it to the study of bird bioacoustics as complex forms of language. Through his research and rare field recordings from inaccessible natural sites, I discovered vast sonic worlds shaped by emotion and communication beyond human understanding. These archives became a rich sonic terrain that we explored further with composer Éric Yvelin.

To conclude, I see “Les Oiseaux” (The Birds) as an attempt to imagine a space of transformation and coexistence beyond normative frameworks. In a time marked by ecological collapse, distrust in science, rising populism, and war, choreography becomes a way of rendering these tensions perceptible. Rather than a manifesto, the piece offers an experiential space where audiences can reconsider the complexity of their bodies and the living world. The stage thus becomes both a space of representation and a site of collective perception—where new intimacies between bodies and identities quietly emerge.