Taking hands, raising a clenched fist, holding each other, a kiss…

For more than ten years, choreographer Joanne Leighton has  meticulously collected photographs of people gathering together. From  celebration to protest to ritual, from one side of the world to another,  nearly a thousand images make up this corpus. This atlas of images is  the starting point for a new dance work entitled People United, which, after 9000 Steps and Songlines, completes a trilogy of work dedicated to universal, shared movements. 

Nine stunning dancers melt into these photos and bring them to flesh  in scenes of jubilation, demonstration, carneval, and dance. Joanne  Leighton’s movement vocabulary is authentic and raw. The dancers bring  to life different people from diverse origins, men, women and children,  without ever imitating them. They are inhabited by the memories of sites  of the images and framed by the scenography, a perpetual wind, which  seems to come from another time.

A layered soundscape composed by Peter Crosbie intertwines the work,  featuring brass bands, percussion, celebratory songs and speeches from  Martin Luther King to Greta Thunberg.

Through the repetition of images, juxtaposition and layering, the  piece is like a moving cartography of visual knowledge, the group seem  to bring back ancestral gestures. These movements unite us all and form  the basis of our humanity. Tender or provocative, sheltered or exposed,  between chaos and immobility, their bodies give rise to a powerful  physical language, both familiar and shared.

Based in Paris Ile-de-France, Joanne  Leighton is a Belgian-Australian choreographer and pedagogue. Her  professional career is linked to an original, dynamic and constantly  evolving vision of dance and her discourse is permeated by an emphasis  on dialogue and exchange, both with the public and with her artistic  collaborators. Central to her work lies the notion of site, territory  and identity, which are for Joanne Leighton interdependent spaces.

Joanne Leighton is the representative choreographer of the  administrative council of the SACD (French Society of Composers and  Dramatic Authors) and the Beaumarchais 2018 – 2020. She is also a member  of the administrative council of La Maison du Geste et de l'Image in  Paris. 

After dancing in the Australian Dance Theater (1986-1991), Joanne  Leighton moved to Europe, living and performing in London for 2 years.  Her company Velvet was formed in Brussels from 1993 - 2010, where she  established her choreographic work, active for over 18 years. She was  choreographer in residence at the Raffinery - Charleroi/Danses  (2003-2005) and Les Halles de Schaerbeek (2005-2007). In 1994 and in  2010 she received the SACD Prize (Society of Composers and Dramatic  Authors) for her choreographic work. Joanne Leighton has been  commissioned to create work for international companies such as the  Dance Theater of Ireland (2001); in Belgium for Charleroi Danses (2005);  in France for the Ballet de Lorraine (2014) and in Switzerland for the  company Marchepied (2015).

Director of the National Choreographic Center of Franche-Comté in  Belfort in France (2010 – 2015), Joanne Leighton formed WLDN in 2015.  WLDN is a project, philosophy and platform for her choreographic  research and creation. Her works have been performed nationally and  internationally in theaters, urban and industrial spaces, art galleries,  town squares, on rooftops and presented on screens and smartphones.  Joanne Leighton's choreographic work has been co-produced and presented  on international stages for over 20 years, with over 30 productions  touring to France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Ireland, Italy,  Latvia, Lithuania, Morocco, Netherlands, Wales, the United Kingdom,  Australia and Cuba.

Joanne Leighton’s choreographic work includes Corps Exquis (2019) a piece for 3 dancers around an exquisite corpse for 58 choreographers; I am sitting in a room,  a movement study of the sitting position performed by four poetic  clowns on the eponymous text by American composer Alvin Lucier; Exquisite Corpse (2012) an exquisite corpse for 7 dancers ; Made in…Series,  a large scale ‘architecture in movement’ for 99 participants performed  in situ and (re)created in France, Denmark, Germany, Australia,  Switzerland, Cuba; The Modulables, a series of site-specific pieces  between installation and performance with an ambulatory public, which  have been evolving over a period of 10 years. In 2014, Joanne Leighton  and the director Christoph Frick co-sign Melting Pot for 9 young  performers from immigrant backgrounds, a cultural exchange between the  Theater Freiburg, the CCN of Belfort and Junges Theater Basel. Chair Dances,  an evolutive virtual digital gallery comprising over 30 short  choreographic films by diverse choreographers involving chairs, was  initiated by Joanne Leighton in 2010.

In 2015 Joanne Leighton initiated a trilogy of works which will span 5 years with her signature piece 9000 Steps, performed by six dancers on a bed of salt to the music Drumming, Steve Reich. This work was followed in 2018 with Songlines, for eight dancers, created to the fascinating musical composition In C by Terry Riley. This trilogy will conclude with her production People United in 2021.

In September 2011, Joanne Leighton launched her large scale work, The Vigil,  whereby each morning and evening at sunrise and sunset over 365 days, a  participant holds watch over the city for one hour, a work for 730  inhabitants and performed over 365 consecutive days. Around these same  principals this choreography has been mounted for the towns Belfort  (September 2011 – September 2012) ; Laval (15th September 2012 – 15th  September 2013) ; Rennes (30th September 2012 – 29th September 2013)  Haguenau (1st January – 31st December 2015), Freiburg, Germany (20th  June 2015 – 19th June 2016) and Evreux, France for the Le Tangram, Scène  Nationale (22nd September 2017 – 22nd September 2018) ;  Dordrecht, for  the Schouwburg Kunstmin in Holland (1st Mai 2019 – 30th April 2020) ,  and eigth project, The Graz Vigil Austria (1st January 2020 -  31st December 2020) for La Strada, is currently in performance. The  Münich Vigil - Türmer München, is due to start shortly (12th December  12th 2020 - 12th December 2021) ; along with The Hull Vigil (20th March  2021 - 19th March 2022) for the Freedom Festival of Hull in the United  Kingdom.

In parallel to this work, Joanne Leighton initiated a series of  walking pieces as with Walk#1 Belfort – Freiburg, where she walked a  path between two Vigil sites by following waterways over 127 kms in four  days. Since 2014 these ‘walking dances’ are part of her choreographic  practice. In September 2017, Joanne Leighton mounted Walk, a performance  over 25 km linking the four theaters of Paris Réseau Danse, with an  open call for participants to join her. Her work Salt Circle concluded this unique event at Atelier de Paris/CDCN. Her walking projects such as Walking as Remembering (2019) weave into her choreographic practice and stage work.

An internationally recognized pedagogue, Joanne Leighton regularly  gives lectures and workshops. She has taught for companies such as  Jean-Claude Gallotta, Catherine Diverrès, Angelin Preljocaj, Trisha  Brown Company, Batsheva Company, Charleroi / Danses, AMNT in Tokyo, Need  Company, Rosas, Wim Vandekeybus, and dance centers like the Seoul  International Choreographic Center (South Korea); The Menagerie de  Verre, Paris; Centre National Danse in Paris; Atelier de Paris / CDCN;  PARTS; Dansens House in Copenhagen; and the Croatian Institute for  Movement and Dance / Zagreb Dance Center. She has also taught in art  schools such as the fine arts school in Toulouse.

Interested in finding new ways of being, doing, thinking, working,  making and presenting, Joanne Leighton seeks to embrace a radically  different approach to access, ownership, and authorship in contemporary  dance performance.

WLDN is a project and a philosophy at  the same time. The title references the renowned book Walden by Henry  David Thoreau (1817-1862), American essayist, teacher, philosopher,  naturalist and poet. This novel, published in 1854, influenced many  schools of thought and served as a reference for those seeking to  reconnect with basic values. Thoreau recounts his two years experience  living independently in the middle of nature. 

WLDN can be portrayed as a kind of ‘transcendental striptease’, which  represents for me coming back to the fundamental essence and a  simplifying of work, of stripping down, but also, back to the most  elemental, even the most primordial aspects of performance in terms of  dance, movement, and site. This simplicity can and does involve stage  work and public space work but also includes productions of the kind of  work that can easily be documented and published with the tools at hand  which includes platforms such as social media : iphone, internet,  facebook…

What is it in Thoreau’s action that can be mirrored in our  changing cultural landscape with the contemporary tools we have in  creating, recording, notating, publishing, dissemination ?