Biography

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Rob Hesp (they/them) is a performance artist, choreographer and dancer from Leeds, England currently living in Copenhagen, Denmark. 

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Rob trained in London at the Royal central school of speech and drama, completing a BA in Performance arts before starting to work freelance. Rob has also trained intensively with companies including Candoco dance (London) and SITI company with Anne Bogart (New York City).

 

Rob is interested in the ways people come together, creating work that traverses between the local, intimate, individual experience and the large scale group expression. Working with choreography and movement, Rob builds frames and compositions to house chance encounters and improvisation. Swelling choreographies often growing from a language of action, counter-action and crude gesture, rooted by the relationships between people or pathways in space. 

Rob is also very interested in different forms of participation, in challenging and sometimes removing the distance between the audience and the performance - giving people direct access to the sensation, feeling and movement within the work.

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As a performer Rob has worked with artists including Marina Abramović, Mehmet Sander, Farah Saleh, Mab George Sanders, Samuel D. Loveless, Luke Pell, and Kimberley Harvey (Subtle Kraft Co), performing at venues including the Royal academy of arts, Saatchi gallery and Tate Modern.

 

Rob also worked as a core performance member of Danish performance group Sisters Hope for a number of years, with key involvement in their Sisters Hope Home 5 year immersive project as well as larger performance projects Sensuous City local (Copenhagen 2023), and Sensuous governing (Edinburgh fringe festival and H.C. Andersen festival).

 

Rob has presented work at venues including the V&A Museum, Southbank Centre and Roundhouse, London as well as at high profile festivals and art platforms such as Latitude, Spill, and Buzzcut. ​They currently work as a regular teacher and guest choreographer at Ryslinge Teater Højskole, leading the spring term line 'Performance; the body as site, sense and instrument'. 

 

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