Chloé Pisco
Dances with Whales, between Water and Air

Chloé Pisco Practice Research – Dances with Whales, between Water and Air
3 June to 5 July

Chloé Pisco is currently collaborating with local artist Tomasz Madajczak, alongside dancer artists Safire Hiraki and Ash Ashton, with additional contributions from locally based artists Hetty Gazzaniga, Nori Madajczak, and Lucia Smith.

Her project, Dances with Wild Whales, investigates the intersection of underwater and aerial dance, combining underwater film, bespoke bungee harnesses, vertical dance, and projections. At its core, this work reflects on interspecies communication through movement, challenging ideas of human separation from and dominance over nature.

Research will take place across varied environments—studio, sea, air, and land—exploring how gravity, time, and space shift our physical experience. These embodied inquiries will be visually documented and looped into immersive installations using projections of underwater footage, dancers in flight, and real-time video mapped onto performers’ bodies.

Chloé will work under the mentorship of Tomasz Madajczak in editing and multimedia production. Together, they aim to create large-scale projections on Uillinn’s façade and develop a growing archive of dance film work informed by Chloé’s residency experiences, underwater research, and dreamlike visions of connection with whales.

5 July at 2.00pm to 3.00pm Sharing of Work in Progress
Free event, no booking necessary

You are invited to attend a sharing of this work in progress which will include a conversation and dance film projections.

For her residency at Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre, Chloé Pisco continues to develop her project Dances with Whales…, an exploration of the meeting point between dancing in the air and dancing underwater. The residency supports a collaborative project with fellow dance artists Safire Hiraki and Ash Ashton, and visual artist Tomasz Madajczak.

Chloé Pisco is a Basque, Sicilian woman raised in West Cork from a young age. For the last 24 years, Chloé has been creating, performing, teaching and most of all directing: dance, circus, spectacle and immersive theatre hybrid works – as a full time career, around the globe.

In 2018, Chloé did her 2 year Masters by research at DOCH school of circus and dance, Stockholm University of the Arts. Here she also taught directing and creation tools for circus/dance making. Originally creating this as a full time 3 month directing course commissioned by the Dept of Arts and Culture WA, Australia. Spending three months writing it and collecting hundreds of creation tools. She later also developed in depth teacher training for circus and aerial, delivering it all over Australia. As well running a handful of circus schools. Chloé also spent years developing new movement language in her own unique bespoke bungee contemporary dance harnesses.

Going back to the beginning, after a decade of professional Classical ballet work at the same time as choreographing hundreds of parades for “Craic Na Coilte” street theatre – she studied at Alvin Ailey School of dance at Fordham University NYC from 1999.

She then ran her own companies, all receiving project funding and full time year round, anchor residencies in performance centres (with theatres): First “Rebus” a live contact improv dance co. with voice, followed by “No Frontiers Dance co.” an anti racism dance company boasting 42 nationalities and 60 original creations; and then “The Flying dance company”, an aerial theatre dance hybrid.

She performed the contemporary dance works of Batsheva dance co., Alvin Ailey co. II, William Forsythe, Marrugeku dance theatre (Aus), Daghdha dance co (Ire) and beyond.

Creative directing her own original works, (as well as creative producing them), with casts of 1 up to 300 live performers. In places as varied as: A Stockholm black box theatre, to the centre of the red Deserts in Australia, to parades in front of millions on the streets of Dublin, to Windsor Castle estate suspended from a 1000 year old Oak tree, from the red box at Legs on the Wall Sydney, to rigged over the Indian ocean in, Exmouth Western Australia, to the facade of the Ningaloo Marine research building, to her BMX ballet on huge skate ramps on the streets of Cork, to a 101 metre long, 12 metre high tightwire in the Ausie Bush, from a 30 metre rope rigged to St Paul’s Church in Bristol to the circus field at Glastonbury and most recently dancing underwater …

Chloé worked with Australian First Nations Artists over the last decade including with Marrugeku, with Pundara dance directed by Janine Oxenham, (a Malgana Yamatji woman), with the Blackrobats in Kuranda, as well as in remote communities such as Burringurrah (WA), Arlparra, Ampilatwatja, Alpurrurulam (Barkley and NT), Millimgimbi (Arnhem land) and many more. Co-Creating full length shows and short dance, Hip Hop and circus films collaboratively with locals, driven by the subjects and stories they are passionate about. This is wholeheartedly her favourite work on earth.

Her research career began in 2013 with an obsession around our own mammalian empathy neurochemistry: All centering around the hormone Oxytocin.It is our empathy, compassion, love, connection, trust, awe and bonding hormone.

Her academic fields of research interest include: neuroendocrinology, feminism, gender, unconscious bias, social sciences and more recently marine mammal communication.

As both an artistic and academic researcher she is currently conducting all of it under “Oxytocin Projects.” She developed live artwork based on the theories and data quoted in her paper: “The Oxytocinergic solutions for human systems and creative applicability”.

Later, her thesis research proved that engagement in live arts actually increases oxytocin. This is significant because this in turn boosts a slew of physical and mental health benefits and increases empathy.

8 years ago Chloé began field research in non-verbal communication between oxytocin making mammals – whales and humans. Dancing underwater with wild humpback whales, while freediving … Who then danced right back! She has since spent 9 weeks underwater with wild humpback whales funded to research their body language and physical movement expression, and months at sea in 4 oceans working with whales.

She is in development for her feature film titled DANCES WITH WHALES as well as a Live Show Version – a spectacle work of vertical dance and much more, by the same name.

Tomasz Madajczak (b. 1979, Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland) is an artist based in Ireland. He studied Photography at the University of Fine Arts in Poznań, Poland, from 1998 to 2003, completing his MA in the Intermedia Department under Prof. Andrzej Syska. In 2003, he emigrated to Ireland, where he has since been residing and creating.

Madajczak’s artistic practice is rooted in the methodology of deep listening, fostering collaboration with artists, individuals, and communities to explore artistic processes in a multilayered and immersive way. His works often take on a site-specific character, incorporating encountered situations, transcultural dialogues, stories, architecture, and the environment, while engaging with multiple forms of narration. His artistic explorations span photography, sound, video, and objects, shaping spatial and immersive experiences.

He has received numerous awards from the Irish Arts Council, Cork County Council, and Create, including multiple bursaries, Agility Awards, Artist in Community Awards, and residency awards. His most recent projects include NoSpace, Thought Space, Hybrid Identity, Areas of Presence, Listening Stones, Small Stories, Liquid Presence, and The Realm of Trauma.

Madajczak’s works have been exhibited internationally in Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Pakistan, France, Belgium, Italy, and Ireland.

@oxytocinforall (IG) @chloepisco (FB)

Collaborators:  @tomaszmadajczak @safirehikari @ashton.fenix

www.theoxytocinproject.com

Chloé acknowleges the support of a Cork County Council Arts Office Bursary Award

Image: Tomasz Madajczak

WCAC acknowledges the financial support of Cork County Council and The Arts Council in making these residencies possible.