Director – Dancer – Aerialist – Researcher – Theoretician – Teacher
Chloé Pisco is a director, choreographer, dancer, aerialist full time for 20 years and more recently also a researcher and theoretician. She completed her Masters in Fine Arts Research at DOCH – School of Dance and Circus at Stockholm University of the Arts, where she also taught creation tools for circus artists and directing.
Her fields of interest in writing / research and artistic themes include: neuro- sociology, feminism, physics, social sciences and philosophy. Her current research is on oxytocin and it’s relationship to ART. It is our empathy, compassion, love, connection, trust and bonding neurotransmitter.
She has developed a full length LIVE experiential artwork based on the theories and data quoted in her paper: “The Oxytocinergic solutions for human systems and creative applicability”. This performative experience is called “Save the 5 % – Empathy for Psychopaths”. It includes multiple genre smashing explorations – including: blind folding the entire audience before they enter the space, directly onto stage, together while holding hands in a giant rhizome of interconnection. And then being free to wander and see any of the multiple decentralised moments of dance/circus/theatre expression happening simultaneously.
Chloé has been blessed to teach dance and circus in remote Australia with First Nations people of that land. Developing shows and short films with local First Nations Australians. Throughout a variety of projects over 6 years, including in Arlparra, Ampilatwatja, Alpurruluam, Burringurrah, Millimgimbi as well as many projects in regional, but less remote work. She has begun learning the basics of Noongar, Yolgnu and Alyawarr languages. This is whole heartedly her favourite work on earth.
She also teaches teachers how to teach circus and dance, around the globe and has written and delivered a full time course in “creation tools and directing” for mid-career professionals – Funded by WA’s Dept of Culture and the Arts, (2017).
Chloé has spent 7 weeks underwater with wild humpback whales, researching non-verbal communication through dance, between two oxytocin producing mammals, humans and whales (in Australia 2017 and Tonga 2018.) She has delivered lectures and presentations on her research papers on oxytocin and unconscious bias at multiple conferences and academic platforms.
Chloé is the newly appointed coordinator for the global “Women in Circus Network”, on the board of directors of the global circus research collective CCCIRQUE; and a founding member of the “Global Collective for Diversity in Circus” and the academic research group: Gender and circus research, (in French.)
Chloé began dancing at 3 years old in Brussels, she then moved to Ireland in 1992 where she joined the Cork city ballet and began touring with them around Ireland. After her Colaiste Stiofan Naofa formation she went to Alvin Ailey NY/ Fordham uni. to finish her Degree. After that she danced with “Daghdha Dance co.”, then she co founded Rebus dance co, after which she mounted “No Frontiers Dance company” (An anti racism dance company), and the “Flying dance co.” The latter two had anchor residencies at Firkin Crane spanning 7 years. The first had the same at the Granary theatre.
She travelled and worked all over Europe with the Aerial work that began in 2006. Including with Fidget Feet aerial dance theatre, directing parades for LUxe outdoor spectacle /parade / promenade theatre and the unstoppable Cork Community Art link and their Dragon of Shandon – all home in Ireland.
In 2012, She travelled to perform in Australia and teach her skills and became wildly impassioned with their indigenous culture, dance and nature! She found it very hard to leave and 6 years later had become part based there also… She travelled to 18 countries in 6 months for work and this last decade has been vastly different working so intensely as a freelancer. With big upsides and some down sides. Not dealing with the responsibility of running a company of dancers, full time, for a change. But also not having a daily artistic family to build work with for years and or indeed grow a rhizome of links, rooted in a single place.
She then travelled to do her MA in Stockholm. And just as the pandemic began, she got injured, and came home to Ireland and the world locked down. Having a spine injury, being in chronic pain, locked in a box, in the country side, well over 5 kms away from anything, with out a driving licence – was rather challenging, as it has been for the whole world – over those two years. But her healing, rehabilitation work and future plans gave her purpose. She cannot wait to get back in studios to play with her bespoke harnesses and finish developing both the Whale show and Film “DANCES WITH WHALES” and the live show “Save the 5 % – EMPATHY FOR PSYCHOPATHS.”