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. Therefore it is 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 source of inspirations for new developments in 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. With his live exhibition expo zéro he was guest at Springdance, Utrecht (2010) and Performa 11 in New York (2011). 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 November 2013, New York’s MoMA presented several works by Boris Charmatz in a three-week show entitled Three Collective Gestures. Charmatz is the co-author of several books on contemporary dance, most recently Je suis une école and (with Jérôme Bel) Emails 2009-2010.
As choreographer and dancer Boris Charmatz is one of the formative artists the Ruhrtriennale 2012-2014 was able to work with. He developed and performed enfant, links (as part of No Education), Levée des conflits, Partita 2 (with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker), manger (world premiere 2014) and the film Levée(2014).