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Helene is a teacher and choreographer of traditional dances of the Balkans and Islamic Orient. She lectures and publishes on dance ethnology and costume studies. In order to do this she has conducted many research projects in Bulgaria, ex-Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, Greece, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Egypt, the ex-USSR, Tunisia and Morocco as well as with immigrants in Germany, Canada and the USA. She speaks several Languages. She is an active member of the Study Group on Ethnochoreology (ICTM/UNESCO). For many years she has been leading dance and culture study tours and now she is the director of her own travel agency Window on the World Voyages.
Helene studied Dance Ethnology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and was later a doctoral candidate in Folklore, Slavistics and Turcology at the Georg-August University in Göttingen, Germany. In Los Angeles she performed with AVAZ International Dance Theater, Gypsy Dance Company and Jasna Planina Ensemble. After a year at the Folkdance Academy in Plovdiv, Bulgaria she was a guest of the Turkish State Folkdance Ensemble in Ankara. She directed her own ensemble Raqs-e Hilal for several years in Germany and is currently directing her new project, Helene Eriksen's Traditional Dance Theater, in Seattle.
As a dancer she is in demand internationally with performances in Germany, Austria, England, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, France, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Turkey, Russia, Canada, Norway, the USA, Pakistan, Algeria, Slovenia, Mexico and Nepal.
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