About Kinesis Dance
Kinesis Dance somatheatro is based in Vancouver, Canada. The company’s mandate is to contribute to the development of the art of modern dance through workshops and performances both in Canada and abroad. The company seeks to explore the human condition through contemporary dance and physical theatre.
Greek-Canadian Paraskevas Terezakis founded Kinesis Dance in 1986. Under his artistic direction, the company has created highly visual and emotional works which combine live performance with multimedia, text, design, and original musical composition. Terezakis’ choreography can be described as physical poetic theatre. The movements explore the contrast between the excitement of energy and the simple beauty of stillness. Often inspired by classical Greek theatre, Terezakis explores the visceral and emotional landscape of the human condition.
In 2023, Dancer & Choreographer Rachel Helten was appointed Associate Artistic Director, to help with the transition of the company as founder Paras Terezakis begins passing the reins, and mentoring her in becoming his eventual successor as Artistic Director. While honouring Paras’ legacy, Rachel is bringing a newer compassionate artistic voice to the organization.
Rachel Helten took on her role as Artistic Director of the company in April 2024, when Paras Terezakis stepped down and introduced her as his successor.
“The choreography is original, intense, violent yet tender, and intrusive.”
– Kathemerini Newspaper, Athens Greece
About Paras Terezakis
Founder & Artistic Director/Choreographer from 1986 to 2024
“Terezakis’ work is testimony to the restrictions and forced choices one makes in life. He choreographs people confined within themselves, showing the resulting change in attitude as one moves forward to internalize rules which Terezakis himself considers not representative of real needs and desires.”
– Avgi Newspaper, Athens
Paraskevas Terezakis began his professional training in his native Greece, where his professional career started in theatre and dance with Experimental Ballet Athens. After moving to Canada in 1979, he studied at Toronto Dance Theatre, York University, and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. In 1986, he started Kinesis Dance somatheatro and since then the company has performed world-wide over forty original dance works for solo, duet, and groups.
A Dionysian choreographer, Terezakis’ multi-textured style is the culmination of a process that engages improvisation, self-expression, novelty, and blind inspiration in order to free the body from habitualness. It is an emergence of complex cascading events arising out of a multiplicity of minimalistic physical interactions.
His choreography is marked by heightened physicality of movement. Whether the lines are expansive and rhapsodic or clipped and telegraphic; it is choreography that uses emphasis to communicate emotion. The dance lines are created in a rough, manipulated style so as to connote rawness and energy.
Terezakis seeks to evoke rather than to describe in his work as his dance vocabulary signifies the state of the dancer’s soul. Hostile to plain meaning, gestural superficiality, and false sentimentality his choreography is clothed in the imagery and symbolism of occidental mythology intended to evoke idea and emotion. The dancer’s body becomes a perceptible surface to represent the esoteric affinity with the primordial Ideal.
“…the Greek-born choreographer sets a human impulse and watches its effects on different people…truly memorable. Terezakis makes much of his Greek heritage, employing techniques of classical Greek theatre and the raspy, urgent qualities of Greek music. He is one of a handful of Canadian choreographers invited to compete for the Seine-Saint-Denis Festival. Café Nocturne confirms the honour is well deserved.”
– The Vancouver Sun
“Terezakis strongly realizes or reveals himself in his dance dramas but the theme never centres on simply ego. His is an extraordinary ability.”
– The Georgia Straight, Vancouver
About Rachel Helten
Artistic Director/Choreographer from 2024
Rachel Helten is a dance artist, choreographer, and teacher currently based on the unceded indigenous land belonging to the Coast Salish peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō (Stolo), and Səl̓ílwəta/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. (Vancouver, B.C.). In 2016, she completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance at Simon Fraser University. The cornerstones of Rachel Helten’s creative practice are found in deep listening, collaboration, interdisciplinary methods and unearthing the stories that live within our bodies. Her work is often charged with a curiosity of how we interact and respond to our real and imagined worlds and how vulnerable states can transform and liberate us.
In like manner, Rachel has been blessed to be a part of processes that nurture these fascinations with a vast array of artists. In her experience as a student, she has worked with Judith Garay, Rob Kitsos, Dorotea Saykaly, Vanessa Goodman, Heather Myers, Gioconda Barbuto, Emmalena Fredriksson, Peter Bingham, Sarah Chase, and Crystal Pite. Her select credits as an independent artist are working with Desirée Dunbar, Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, The Plastic Orchid Factory, The East Vancouver Opera, Voirelia: Psychology, Philosophy and Dance Hub, Kinesis, Chaos Emblematic and Okams Racer. Her work has been presented at Goldcorp Centre for The Arts, Frederic Wood Theatre at UBC with Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, Moberly Arts & Cultural Centre with Dezza Dance, Aberthau with Dezza Dance, The Dance Centre with Voirelia and 12 Minutes Max, The Cultch with Alley Theatre and 45 W where she co-produced a fundraiser for The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.
Rachel’s intention to aid in the emancipation and healing of herself and others has intimately transformed her artistic practice and has led her to various corners of the earth. Rachel gleaned insight from teaching dance at an art therapy centre in Quito, Ecuador. In addition, she has trained in Florence, Italy; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Cascais, Portugal, and Brooklyn, USA. She is currently collaborating with and a member of Berlin based arts collective CHAOS EMBLEMATIC under the direction of Britt Angus and Vancouver based arts collective Okams Racer under the direction of Ana Sosa. She is also helping with the transition of acclaimed dance company Kinesis Dance somatheatro and receiving mentorship from renowned artistic director and founder Paraskevas Terezakis as she takes on the role of Associate Artistic Director. Rachel looks forward to continuing to breathe life into the seeds of creation within her and to honour our interconnectedness, and the poetry of nature through her work.
STAFF
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR / CHOREOGRAPHER
Rachel Helten
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR / COORDINATOR
Carline Dolmazon
BOARD
CHAIR
Andrea Van Der Ree
TREASURER
Wendy Kao
CO-TREASURER
Linda Rosenheck
SECRETARY
Alina Sotskova
DIRECTORS
Clémence Beurton, Lesley Burke-O’Flynn, Mitch Helten, Janet Joy, Sylvia Nguyen
We would like to acknowledge that we are gathered and are creating on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples–Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations.
