Esteban Lecoq Co-Founder & Co-Artistic Director of AΦE; Choreographer; Dancer
Esteban has worked with Johannes Wieland Dance Company (Kassel, Germany), Jasmin Vardimon Company and Punchdrunk among numerous other artists and choreographers in dance, film and immersive productions. He started to choreograph alongside his performing career in 2008. In 2016, he co-founded AΦE with Aoi Nakamura, pioneering XR technologies in dance. AΦE has toured 20 countries and over 80 venues. In 2021, AΦE became associate artists of the Institute of Cultural and Creative Industries - University of Kent and launched A+E Lab located at The Historic Dockyard Chatham. Across all works, AΦE has engaged over 101,000 live audience members and participants.
AΦE (AE) uniqueness lies in the use of technology to completely reinvent audience participation by touring their productions worldwide. AΦE is an associate artist of the Institute of Cultural and Creative Industries – University of Kent (iCCi) and in 2022 they launched A+E Lab, a cultural and technology hub located at Historic Dockyard Chatham, UK, producing innovative productions and delivering community and artist engagement programmes related to technology and culture. Across all their work, they engaged over 101,000 live audiences and participants internationally.
Their latest creation currently on tour, LILITH.AEON, is an interactive experience, blending extended reality (XR), dance, and artificial intelligence (AI). Drawing its source from the experience of personal bereavements and inspired by the true story of the youngest person cryogenized, the immersive and interactive installation LILITH.AEON questions the future of humanity in the era of transhumanism and artificial intelligence.
The installation, a monumental LED cube, retraces the life cycle of Lilith, a virtual being, a digital and poetic reincarnation, a soul suspended between death and future awakening. The work comes alive through the interaction between the audience and the AI, creating an unprecedented performative ballet where human and machine dance together. Thanks to an evolving real-time narrative, LILITH.AEON explores our new relationships with technology, notably the prospect of transcending biological mortality, and questions what becomes of our humanity when our beings are reduced, augmented, or replaced by digital data.
