‘... my grandma's big house,
the bathroom, it was blue, clean, with a big bathtub.
There was colourful cosmetic sea salt and often the smell of hairspray. It was warm and very comfy.
I remember her transforming there,
doing hair and makeup.
But she broke this cleanness of the bathroom by always
bringing a cigarette in and smoking
while doing her hair.
The cigarette would rest on the clean ceramic sink.
Left a dark stain.’
‘We had a big staircase.
I remember sliding down it often
and getting bruises on my ass!
I miss it a lot.
It was like getting down from your own cloud into the real world.’
A BODY TO DWELL deviser, performer
Lea Blau
‘In childhood I was doing choir and dance, a lot of running and body experiments...
At the acting academy I wanted to move beyond the traditional theatre form and explore physical theatre, contemporary dance and other ways of using the performance space. Creating characters gave me insight on how fragile our identities are, and how structures that formed us as humans are always questionable.
Later, I realised that 'space' is what I’m interested in; with or without performance. During my masters, I started playing with an immersive type of performance, experimenting with different media.’
‘material
I like playing around with clay, pearls, rocks, and natural materials, researching ancient knowledge, texts, plants, traditional practices and folk rituals. I enjoy the sauna where I often have some profound thoughts...
I’ve recently started working more with objects, due to lack of space for physical work.
I’m interested in the elemental power of certain materials, what energies they hold and how the body relates to them.’
‘sound...
the intriguing idea is that the absence of the body always implies its presence. I am following my ongoing interest in negative space and 'emptiness' and I will forever love and combine this with music and singing.
Sound has this immaterial power that moves human experience to another level.’
‘mythology,
for me it combines the past, the present and the potential; and I'm in love with the way of using symbolism as a poetic language.
I like liminal aesthetics which maybe sometimes come out as creepy ha-ha
but for me it’s just
the space of otherness.’
‘Maybe I underestimate,
my joints?
We don't know how great it is to move until we are stuck.’
LEA BLAU is originally from Rijeka, Croatia, currently living in Tallinn, Estonia and permanently living nowhere.
Her practice lies in physical performance, singing, crafting, walking a lot in nature and being close to bodies of water.
Lea is currently working on multiple projects, collaborating as a performer and a maker, and developing concepts around the relationship between inner and outer landscapes - merging of body, nature and sound, questioning memory and the influence of the past.
After getting her BA in Acting at the Academy of Arts, University of Banja Luka, Lea continued her professional training by attending various workshops and masterclasses in physical theatre and dance, before she specialised in an MA in contemporary performance at The Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre.