Rob Hesp (they/them) is a performance artist, choreographer and dancer originally from Leeds, England. 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 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.
As a performer Rob has worked with artists and choreographers including Marina Abramović, Mehmet Sander, Ingri Fiksdal, Farah Saleh, Robert George Sanders and Luke Pell, performing at venues including the Royal academy of arts, Saatchi gallery and Tate Modern. Rob also worked as a core performance artist with Danish performance group Sisters Hope for a number of years, with key involvement in their Sisters Hope Home 5 year immersive project.
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 course line 'Performance; the body as site, sense and instrument'.
Image by Sebastian Buch.