Helen Hall

Pieces

Image showing a frame of the film. It is a split screen. On the right hand side, we see an image of Helen caught mid movement. Her dark curly hair splays out. She wears an orange T-shirt. On the left hand side in a smaller image, we just see a profile of Helen's face.

Pieces is a dance film born from a day of shared curiosity, creative exchange, and play.

The project began as an exploration of how a moment of dance might be captured—not just through movement, but through multiple artistic lenses. Helen invited a group of artists to inhabit the space together and respond intuitively to the act of dancing. Throughout the day, she improvised alongside a violinist; a painter sketched fleeting gestures; a photographer caught transient moments; a songwriter gathered fragments of language; a sound designer recorded the textures of the room; and a videographer creatively captured moments. Artists responding to one another in real time.

 Pieces is a short film constructed from footage and sounds captured during the day. Helen asked videographer Vasiliki Strasanaki to focus on details rather than the whole—feet, hands, legs, partial gestures—fragments of motion that might otherwise be overlooked.

As someone with severe sight loss and no central vision, Helen never perceives the “full picture.” Instead, her experience of the world is more textural and partial. This gathering of partial moments is reflected in ‘Pieces’; a collection of viewpoints woven together.

Sound designer George Sloan shaped the collected audio—breath, footfalls, fabric, resonance—into the film’s soundscape. Using the sounds that express the very physicality of dance, George creates a new composition responding to the video. Image and sound are pieced together to inform a reimagining of the day.

  • Concept, design and dancer: ​​Helen Hall
  • Music composition: ​​​George Sloan
  • Video capture and editing: ​​Vasaliki Strasanaki
Image shows a frame from the film. It is a split screen. On the left-hand side, we can see just Helen's legs and feet. She is lying on the floor with one of her legs on the floor and one of her legs up in the air. On the right hand side of the picture, the other image is blurred. It is taken from a low viewpoint and we just see the blur of orange off Helen's T-shirt and the blur of brown of her curly hair.

It is this day of creative ‘play’ that later fed into the creation of the dance show, Collecting Moments. The video was screened alongside this work as part of a presentation of work at the Bounce festival, 2021.

This work was created as part of an Independent Disabled Artist grant from University of Atypical.