Fascinated by detail, nuances of time, texture, memory and landscape Luke Pell is an artist based in Edinburgh, Scotland who collaborates with people and places, imagining alternative contexts for performance, participation and discourse that might reveal wisdoms for living. Working with words and movements - words as movements - to draw together seemingly unrelated constellations of bodies and thought their practice takes form as intimate encounters - poetic objects, installations, performances and designed environments - choreographies in print and in person.
Luke’s work has been presented throughout the UK and internationally including: Bloomsbury Festival; Cruising for Art - Anti- Festival Finland and In Between Time Bristol; Dance International Glasgow - Tramway; Dansens - Hus Stockholm; E-Motional - Romania; Leith Late - Edinburgh; Light Moves - Ireland; Unlimited Festival - Southbank Centre and I’m With You - Room of Requirement Berlin. Luke has also performed for Rosemary Lee, Janice Parker, Helena Hunter and Pacitti Company, DIVE Queer Party, Naked Boys Reading and recently appeared as a guest writer in James Ley’s Love Song for Lavender Menace with The Lyceum, Edinburgh.
Digital work includes the award-wining Take Me To Bed with Jo Verrent, An Open Field with Fevered Sleep, A Long Side with Lucy Cash and Emilyn Claid and Crossings with Dance Base. He was co-editor for the Embodiment, Interactivity and Digital Performance edition of the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices. Luke’s growing body of writing for dance - online, in print and performed in person - has been commissioned by Scottish Dance Theatre, Southbank Centre, Live Art Development Agency, Yorkshire Dance, Invisible Difference Project, Skanes DansTeater and TanzPlatform. In 2018 Luke was nominated for the inaugural One Dance UK Dance Writing Award.
Luke’s practice has recurrently explored how dance and choreographic thinking meets with other worlds and realities - across interweaving strands as a maker, curator and dramaturg - often bringing together seemingly unrelated constellations of bodies and thought. In his work as a dramaturg for dance and choreography he collaborates with independent artists and organisations to support the creation of distinct projects, navigate processes of change and explore the emergence and evolution of practice. Artists he has worked with include AnnieVickySarah, Claire Cunningham, Jess Curtis, Caroline Bowditch, Mirjam Gurtner, Janice Parker and Robert Softley-Gale for Birds of Paradise Theatre. In 2018 he was Guest Dramaturg as part of South East Dance’s Dramaturg in Residence Programme.
Committed to artist and art-form development his curatorial and participatory projects create spaces for artists and experts from different fields and realities to gather to explore relationships between words and movement, the poetic and choreographic, periphery and community. Arriving at new perspectives, articulations and understandings of what it is to be in the world through interdisciplinary collaboration.
Projects have included the Artist Support weekender with PAL Labs, Claire Hicks and Roanne Dods, The Talking Place for Fevered Sleep as part of Men & Girls Dance, What Next with Frank Bock for Independent Dance, A (Supper) Room Full of Words with Kat Bridge for Greenwich Dance and the In Dialogue series for Candoco Dance Company with whom he was formerly Head of Learning and Research.
Luke has taught and lectured for undergraduate and postgraduate students, artists and professionals worldwide - including D.O.C.H, Trinity Laban, The Place, R.A.D - and has been an advisor to a range of choreographers, companies and institutions - including Nigel Charnock, Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company, Noemi Lakmaier, Catherine Long, Jardin D’Europe with Southbank Centre, Kate Marsh with Metal, Athina Vahla and Wellcome Trust Arts Awards. He was Chair of the board for Chisenhale Dance Space from 2012-2016 and a nominator for the Paul Hamlyn Breakthrough Awards 2018, is Associate Artist with Fevered Sleep, Janice Parker Projects and Candoco Dance Company and a Dance Base Associate Artist since 2017.
