Expanding human consciousness through the power of movement
Merging Modern Physics & Ancient Mysticism to create visceral and immersive productions, HUMANHOOD aims to share extraordinary experiences that transform and connect us all.
Founded in 2016 by Catalan and Birmingham-born artists Julia Robert and Rudi Cole, HUMANHOOD’s following has since rapidly grown in the UK and international dance scene.
Together, Julia and Rudi have developed a unique, symbiotic, fluid movement language that lies at the core of the work. They create intricate choreographic patterns that merge into different energetic shapes with flow and dynamism.
With a commitment to self-growth and artistic expression, HUMANHOOD’s work combines Julia and Rudi’s choreographic style and exceptional physicality with scientific research into physics and astrophysics, alongside a focus on Ancient mysticism, to explore how these seemingly different worlds can come together to shape our human experiences.
These explorations have taken the artists around the world to work with a wide range of multi-disciplinary artists, spiritual practitioners, shamans and indigenous tribes, to stage productions of high levels of artistic intricacy and spiritual resonance, merging energy-shifting sound, light and movement transporting audiences to a place beyond the senses.
Drawn by their interest in the cosmos and nature, the company also collaborates with scientists, including physicist William Chaplin, leader of the NASA Kepler Mission on asteroseismology (the study of stars) and professor at Birmingham University; challenging the dialogue and collaborative process between choreography and scientific research.
“Rudi and Julia have this special mix of artistic integrity, a signature style married to a truly compelling vision, and a hardworking ethos; they clearly build on the legacy of their predecessors Akram Khan, Sidi Larbi Cherkahoui and Hofesh Shechter. Yet as a new generation, they are doing something in their own terms, honing in on the communal and spiritual nature the experience of dance and asking us to join them.”
Eva Martinez
Sadler’s Wells’ Former Artistic Programmer
‘To challenge human consciousness, to transcend culture, to inspire connection through movement.’
Our work is shaped by the constant enquiry into our human experience, giving moments of voidness and yet full zeal: the suspense of a moment in time, a state of nothingness, yet being totally delivered to it.
When reading about black holes colliding, orbiting galaxies, when thinking of the infinitely small or the never-ending magnitudes, our minds cannot possibly grasp what all this could mean, and yet while we are busy with our lives, this is happening in the Universe. We like to play with these bewildering phenomena and feel how it affects the way we move, relate, and perform.
Bringing modern physics and ancient mysticism into the body, letting both approaches collide into our atoms, is a way for us to respond and be part of the evolution of humankind, joining history and future into creativity that arises in the physicality itself. We perceive each of our dance productions as a whole, where light, sound, and movement are interconnected, creating a distinctive world that has a unique nature, its rhythms, and its silence.
The same happens with our dancers, playing with the symbiosis of their minds and the synchronicity of their bodies, creating ever-evolving processes on stage inspired by the ones that occur in the Universe.