Dance as harmonizing self. Louise Follain in conversation with dancer Léo Walk

In conversation with Léo Walk, French dancer, choreographer, and adventurer of the body’s impetuses, we explore a physical language that is both exigency and expressive synthesis

Dance as harmonizing of self –  Louise Follain in conversation with Léo Walk

Photographing dance is like capturing the evidence of the remains: the art. These artistic remains provide a clue of the inner mechanisms that bring the spirit to manifest and transform into a creative form. Dance is the source of creation and expression of life. Perhaps it is so hard to keep track of because it is so anchored in the present moment that its slightest representation can only transcribe the outer vision but never the inner experience of the dancer.

Anna Halpin and the Life Art Process

When researching various dance therapy techniques, I have been particularly drawn to one called Life Art Process, developed by contemporary dancer Anna Halpin, who recently passed away. Anna postulated that each event we experience is an opportunity for an art lesson. It is an inner dialogue that uses movement and dance as a vector, as well as drawing, writing, and poetry.

For Anna, movement is the initial language of the body. Life Art Process focuses on how to make our emotions apparent by dancing them into existence every moment of our lives. Art is a way of digesting life, understanding it, transforming it, and living it. There is a constant interrelation between movement, our emotions, and the imagination; this is the process of life in tandem with art. There is no boundary between art and life. They are the same if embodied in movement, attitude, and perspective.

Creativity flows if we surrender to the natural movement that the body wishes to express. In conversation with Léo Walk, French dancer, choreographer, and adventurer of the body’s impetuses, we explore a physical language that is both exigency and expressive synthesis. 

Doing Graffiti

When we talk about the terms artistic potential and creativity, I feel like society only thinks of ‘artists’, but instead, it is inherent to all human beings – we are all here to express.

Do you think that through dance, people could discover their creative potential? Did dancing help you find out other talents and artistic qualities?

I started drawing. I never knew how to draw. I was doing graffiti. A painter advised me to try to draw as I dance. I started to think from the perspective of my hand. Studying the movements of my hand, I found them pleasant and organic; there, I discovered exciting shapes. Beyond that, dance allows you to discover yourself on all points, gain confidence, know your sexuality, and have a different relationship to touch. You are confronted with energies. Most people don’t face it. Me, I let go. I understand that I sometimes have gentleness and violence; above all, they all have their place. All these energies are fighting for attention in a human; the dance makes it possible to accept them.

Spiritual practices and rituals to get into dance

I feel like dancing has similar effects to more overtly spiritual practices such as kundalini yoga and dynamic meditation. Still, people who dance don’t do it for this access to their spirituality.

No, many have a technical approach. Where I come from, breakdancing leads me to look for other environments because I had feelings that went much further than simply succeeding in a technique. I lost myself in my technique. Today I have a relationship with dance that is spiritual.

Do you have rituals that allow you to get into a dance – or does it come to you? What’s the first thing that gets you into dance?

Sadness. I don’t want to pretend. By pretending that we are fine, by putting on a veil or a shell, we can return to hatred afterward, which is complicated. I have learned to accept this sadness and try to turn it into love and good vibes. Sadness is too beautiful. Dance can be summed up by this process of transforming despair into beauty.

I never needed to take drugs, for example. Because it’s the same process that I have in dance, of going into deep sadness, and you manage to find immense happiness in this sadness. We have all that in ourselves. We have to give ourselves the means to find it. It is mental and spiritual work.

Vulnerability as a technique to apply as expression

When did you realize it wasn’t just about the technique, and when did you recognize the power of your vulnerability and decide to apply it in your expression with movement?

When I have been through complex and violent things, whereas before it was my Wednesday activity, I did breakdance battles, I had fun. I loved the atmosphere. After a while, it became survival. I started dancing anywhere, on a sidewalk. I took my speaker in a parking lot because I would feel dead if I didn’t dance.

I feel like you must have lived through difficult things to be a good artist. Because otherwise, you perform but don’t let go of anything. The people who have moved us the most are those who have suffered the most.

So, either you destroy yourself or try to transform this energy into something positive, which goes far beyond reality because it is far from being.

And from there, you unlock your imagination.

There is so little reason to rejoice today. Apart from cultivating your imagination, dreaming, and creating your world, I see little way to survive mentally.

I hadn’t been able to dance for a while because I was blocking energy. Today I heard some good news that made me boil, and my only way to express it was through movement, like therapy. I didn’t understand why I was so animated and charged.

And when I arrived here earlier, I had a vital need to dance and let go.

The act of  act of spontaneity

Do you manage to abandon yourself on stage in the same way as when you dance alone?

It depends. I find the material for my choreography when I put myself in these states. The body states ideas that I reproduce, but it’s quite robotic when I choreograph. Sometimes I do performances where I’m told it was one of the best, but I don’t feel it. You can bluff if you’re a good dancer, but that’s not why you do this job. I do this so that at some point, there’s a second where I let go of something, and the 2000 people in the room feel it, and their wounds fade and calm down at that moment and give them hope.

I feel like artwork, writing; a good dance should come out of an act of spontaneity.

In music, acting, the jam, and improvisation lead to the most unexpected results. I often find myself trying to prepare for a moment of spontaneity, which is quite paradoxical, this fluidity that you try to reproduce mechanically.

That’s how I learned to dance, and that’s why some dancers don’t want to work with me sometimes because I have a side that’s a little too square. I like to mix the 2.

Bauhaus art and the Triadic Ballet – Oscar Shlemmer

Oscar Shlemmer, Bauhaus artist who developed the very avant gardiste Triadic Ballet saw the modern world according to 2 main currents: mechanized man, man as a machine, and primordial impulses, the depths of creative impulses. He asserted that the choreographed geometry of the dance offered a synthesis of these two.

It’s linked, this mechanical work that I do for hours, to come back to something raw. For example, I’m working for my show on a scene where I intend to give my dancers total freedom to music so intense that I think it would frustrate them not to leave them in their natural state.

From a specific moment your choreography becomes an automatism. Doesn’t this one come at times to curb your freedom?

It bridles it at the moment, but it also creates it. It makes it when you find it because after you can breathe, there is this moment when you let go to come back.

The gender of dance or the gendered dance

Do you think dance is gendered?

I think it depends on the approach of the dancers. I grew up with a father who always told me he was 70% feminine and felt more woman than a man. My dance was freed when I accepted that part of me was a woman. It unblocked my hips and a sensuality that allowed me to go much further in my emotions.

I guess it also depends on what type of dance.

In hip hop, it’s complex. The crumb, the break, for example, is raw and masculine in attitude. There are also women who practice it. So there are types of dance that are more masculine or feminine, but that doesn’t prevent women or men from doing it. There was a time when I couldn’t find myself in breakdance anymore because of this femininity in me. When I let it express itself, it gave me my dance style.

How would you define this style?

I don’t have a specific influence; I’ll draw from myself. I started with capoeira. But already small, at 2 or 3 years old, I was doing shows. My parents put me on French variety, then techno, and I let myself be carried away by the mood. I had fun embodying it. A flamenco dancer, you feel it in the music without knowing what it is. There is something visceral.

Léo Walk: nature, harmony and energy

Do you feel more inspired when you are in nature?

The energy is different. But I think that it depends on how you are loaded. The feeling is the same: a battle, a zenith, a mountain, a stairwell, a city. I have arrived in magnificent places, telling myself that I had no desire to dance because nature soothes me so much that I want to lie down and enjoy. In contrast, when you feel that you are going to explode, more exciting things can happen. It is solitude that I seek. I am a solitary person. It is this solitude that allows me to be in harmony.

Louise Follain

Model, stylist, native Parisian, Louise is a real fashion reference for the Zeta generation.
She is founder and Editor-in-Chief of Combo Magazine – a niche magazine based in Paris.

Léo Walk

Léo Walk is a Frenchcontemporary dancer, choreographer, model, fashion designer and director. His artistic style, called ‘The Walkance’, involves a forward hip movement which has become his trademark.

Photography and art direction Louise Follain, talent Léo Walk

Artworks: Alix Bortoli
Styling: Madeleine Foley
Photo assistant: Oscar Robertson and Timothy Heinrich

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