Between dance and cinema, Jaco Van Dormael, movie and theatre director, and Michèle Anne De Mey, choreographer and dancer, have created a unique hybrid form of theatre. At the border of dance and movie, every night with Kiss & Cry and Cold Blood they invite the spectators to discover emotions at another scale. Creating and broadcasting a movie live on stage and embodying the dancers’ fingers as characters. The show is choreographed so tightly, one mistake could ruin the flow of the performance.
Since then other creations have emerged, the concept has evolved but still, cinema and choreography are part of the DNA of their work together.
Michèle Anne De Mey and Jaco Van Dormael, partners in real life and co-workers on stage, reveal how they combine their talents on stage, where their creative universe meet.
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Michelè Anne de Mey
Trained at the Mudra school in Brussels, the Belgian choreographer Michèle Anne De Mey (Brussels, 1959) began her career in the eighties with several pieces by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Founder of the Rosas and Astragales companies, in the nineties she created internationally successful works such as “Castles in Spain” (1991), “Pulcinella” (1994), “Love Sonnets” (1994), “Cahier” (1995), “Katamenia ”(1997) … As an educator, she has worked in centers such as INSAS or the École en Couleurs in Brussels. Her choreographic work is also the starting point for the making of several films, including "Face à Face" by Eric Pauwels. In 2006 she recreated “Sinfonia Eroica” with which it obtains international prestige and in 2005 she became the director of Charleroi/Danses. In 2011 she created “Kiss & Cry”, an international success with more than 300 performances before more than 180,000 viewers from 20 countries, which was followed by another equally recognized work, “Cold Blood”. In recent years she has created works such as “Amor” or “River”, as well as a new version of Verdi's “Aïda” or the choreographies of “Somnambula”, directed by Jaco Van Dormael.
Jaco Van Dormael
After studying cinema in Paris and Brussels, Jaco Van Dormael (Ixelles, Belgium, 1957) created several documentary and fiction film courses before writing and directing four feature films: “Toto le Héros” (1991), Camera d'Or at the Festival from Cannes; "Le Huitième Jour" (1996) with Pascal Duquenne and Daniel Auteuil, award for Best Actor (ex æquo) at the Cannes Film Festival; "Mr. Nobody" (2009) with Jared Leto, Sarah Polley, Diane Kruger and Lin Dan Pham, winner at the Venice Film Festival and Audience Award at the European Film Awards; and “The Brand New Testament” (2015) with Benoit Poelvoorde, Yolande Moreau, François Damiens and Catherine Deneuve, presented at the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes. In 2012 he presented his first opera, “Stradella de César Franck”. In 2011 he created together with Michèle Anne de Mey “Kiss & Cry”, and in 2015 “Cold Blood”; both works, world hits together. In less than thirty years, Van Dormael has developed a poetic and ambitious universe in its own and non-linear ways of history.
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