Michèle Anne de Mey
© Gaspard Pauwels
Belgian choreographer Michèle Anne de Mey received her dance training at École Mudra (Brussels), founded by Maurice Béjart. In 1983 she was one of four founding members of the company Rosas. For six years she intensively worked with Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and also danced in her pieces. Even if de Mey's interest lies very much in the interface between music and dance, her choreographies always develop along a dramaturgical line creating a unique feeling of familiarity and yet innovation in the connection between the audience and the dancers. Creating her choreography "Sinfonia Eroica" in 1990 she also founded her own company, Astragales. In the following years, Michèle Anne de Mey created more than 30 pieces, such as "Châteaux en Espagne" (1991), "Pulcinella" (1994), "Love Sonnets" (1994), "Cahier" (1995), "Katamenia" (1997) , Utopia (2001), Raining Dogs (2002), 12 Easy Waltzes (2004). Her choreographic work was also the starting point for various video works by Thierry de Mey and Eric Pauwels. In 2011 she founded the collective Kiss&Cry with filmmaker Jaco Van Dormael. Together they developed their very own form of narrative movement miniatures (the choreographic focus is on the fingers and hands of the performers) involving live camera. The two evenings of that collaboration “Kiss&Cry” and “Cold Blood” have been performed hundreds of times worldwide and have been translated into more than 10 languages. In “Amor” (2016) a one and a half hour solo she dances herself, Michèle Anne de Mey processed her own near-death experience that she had on a tour of her company to Canada.