Boris Charmatz
In his works, dancer and choreographer Boris Charmatz, born in 1973 in Chambéry, France, seeks to approach the realms of fine art and philosophy. It is thus only logical that when he accepted the post of artistic director of the Centre chorégraphique national de Rennes et de Bretagne he declared the institution a museum for dance. Since then, the institution has regularly invited contemporary artists and thinkers from all disciplines to work together on new forms and formats. ›Musée de la Danse‹ is today a museum in progress, a platform and provides impulses towards new developments on the international dance scene.
Charmatz studied at the ballet school of the Paris Opera and already attracted international attention with his first works as a nineteen year old. Alongside choreographed works that have travelled around the world, most recently Roman Photo (2009), Flip Book (2009) and Levée des conflits (2010), Charmatz also developed many improvisational formats (with Saul Williams, Archie Shepp, Médéric Collignon) and dance workshops with students, children, and amateurs. In the fall of 2011, Charmatz was a guest at Performa 11 with his live exhibition Expo Zéro in New York. For the exhibition Moments: Eine Geschichte der Performance in 10 Akten (ZKM Karsruhe 2012) he developed performative strategies of appropriation with colleagues from the realms of art and science.
In the spring of 2013, he presented a new version of the experimental exhibition Broullion, where performer and visitors bring the exhibit to move and introduce a new sequence to the arrangement. Charmatz is the co-author of several books on contemporary dance, most recently Je suis une école.
In the opening program of Ruhrtriennale 2012, Charmatz presented enfant, a dance piece 9 nine dancers, 3 machines, and 17 children. In the framework of No Education, he invited a group of children to Museum Folkwang to participate in a workshop on the subject of motionlessness. He is attending Ruhrtriennale 2013 with Levée des Conflits and the duet Partita 2.