José Besprosvany

Biography

José Besprosvany, choreographer and director, was born in 1959 in Mexico. He has lived in Belgium for more than twenty years and obtained Belgian nationality in 2001. He has been part of the renovators of Belgian-French contemporary dance since the beginning of the 1980s with, among others, the Mossoux-Bonté Company, Pierre Droulers, Michèle Noiret and Michèle-Anne de Mey. He studied theater (mime, movement, acting, mask) at the Jacques Lecoq School (Paris). During his training at the Mudra School directed by Maurice Béjart, José met the musician and teacher Fernand Schirren. Schirren taught him the importance of breathing and the pulsation of the heart at the basis of each gesture performed, each word spoken, their meeting on and in the body and their temporization, giving birth to rhythm. Then, for two years, he was part of Maurice Béjart's Ballet du XXème siècle. In 1986, he founded his own company, always in search of other modes of expression, José has works in his repertoire that are as strong as they are different. His first works, rather minimalist, are Momentum (1984), Evento (1986) and Tempéraments (1988). His work continues with a series of pieces questioning the relationship between classical and contemporary languages, with Von Heute auf Morgen (1989), Apollon la Nuit (1990) and Retours (1992). He then began a reflection on the relationship between narrative and dance, with Cuarteto (1993), based on a text by Marguerite Duras, followed by Hombre Alado (1995) and Lara (1996), a choreography based on the anonymous text of a 15th century Spanish epic. These shows have been programmed in the most important places of contemporary dance. In 1992, he also created the choreographies of Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell and Medeamaterial by Pascal Dusapin presented at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie. At the end of the 1990s, he questioned his work, finding it too much in conformity with a certain standardization, and approached his work from another angle. In 1999, he presented Dos y Dos (1999), an astonishing encounter between dance and flamenco performed live, alongside pieces by Maguy Marin and William Forsythe. Also in 1999, he created the musical Belle à mourir, based on a Kurdish legend by Mamé Alan and adapted by Thomas Gunzig. Triptico (2002) and 9 (2005) mark an increased interest in non-Western performing arts by questioning North-South relations. In recent years, the art of puppetry has also become an important component in his work. The Princess of Babylon (2003), a tale by Voltaire brought to the stage in an imaginary empire is told and sung by actors, dancers, musicians and a storyteller. A propos de Butterfly (2004) and the last creation La Belle au bois de Dandaka (2007) and the last creation Prométhée enchainé (2010) continue this research. In parallel to dance, José is also interested in theater and cinema. He directed Elles (1996) by Nicole Malinconi, Les Indifférents by Odilon-Jean Perier (1996), L'Invisible by Philippe Blasband as well as Prométhée enchaîné by Eschylus adapted by Henry Bauchau (1998). He directed the video-dance Andrès (1992) and the short film Le Dessin (2004), presented in several international festivals. Among his numerous awards and distinctions, we can mention Il Coreografo Electronico (Italy) and the Bert Leysen Prijs (Belgium) as well as the jury's attention of Danscreen (Germany) for the video-dance Andrès (1993), the prize for the best show of the year in the French Community (Belgium) for La Princesse de Babylone (2004) ; the prizes of the public and the new forms at the Rainbow Festival (Russia) for A propos de Butterfly (2007)