CHANTAL YZERMANS

 

photo Ronald Stoops 2013

 

My initial training is academic, at the crossroads of classical and contemporary dance. Since the beginning of my choreographic career in the early 2000s, I have been developing works that resonate with my sensibility as a dancer—creations that were formally accomplished.

After completing my studies at the conservatory, my path as a dancer led me to New York, where I studied with choreographer Merce Cunningham and his company. Awarded a Full Merit Scholarship at the Merce Cunningham Dance Studio, I immersed myself in the Cunningham technique: a radical and demanding approach based on the decentralization and de-hierarchization of the body and the scenic space. This abstraction, which goes beyond form itself, moves toward a more metaphysical dimension of dance and profoundly shaped my artistic approach during my years of study in New York.

During these six years of training in New York, I simultaneously undertook my first choreographic creations, within a particularly precarious economic context. As a student on a sponsored visa under the Cunningham Foundation, it was difficult to work outside this institutional framework. By seizing occasional opportunities—grants and support from recognized downtown New York institutions—I was nevertheless able to develop short studies and collaborative projects (Movement Research / Judson Church, Columbia University – Music Department, Danspace Project). Working conditions remained extremely constrained: limited rehearsal time, scarce spaces, and presentation venues that were difficult to secure in Manhattan in the early 2000s.

I worked during this period with several dancers from the Cunningham company, including Louise Burns, Cédric Andrieux, Rashaun Mitchell, or Cheryl Therrien, who generously agreed to share these moments of collaboration. Despite the brevity of rehearsal time, these exchanges gave rise to short formal dance works, strongly influenced by Cunningham’s aesthetic and carried by the exceptional quality and grace of the dancers.

Alongside this choreographic work, another essential dimension of my research developed through encounters with multimedia artists. Dance became a calligraphic material, whose live presence feeds the visual and sonic writing of live media art. These collaborations—particularly with artists such as Kurt Ralske and the collective 242.pilots (Hrvatski)—were often constructed in an improvisational manner, due to the lack of time and space. While these projects remained primarily exploratory and aesthetic, they nevertheless constituted a decisive step in the expansion of my artistic field.

Upon my return to Europe, where I live and work between Antwerp, Paris, and Madrid, I continued my research within more stable and sustainable working conditions, a  shift in context also transformed my approach: the time devoted to research allowed the work to unfold within a slower, deeper process.

New confluences began to shape my writing, in which movement is grounded in historical research, while dramaturgy is built through transdisciplinary dialogue. An investigative process developed around iconic works, their collective heritage, and the position of the artist-author. Scenography then emerges from these dramaturgical and conceptual reflections as a natural extension of the choreographic gesture.

Witthdrawing from my personal professional activities as a choreographer around 2020 , mainly due to the critical  covid  situation and I   the founded ' Radicale1924' an artist residency project initiated in 2021 at Maison Routier, with my partner Sylvia Zade Routier, in our home and village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, France. Radicale1924 was never conceived as an attempt to redefine Surrealism, but rather as a place for living and working together, where new artistic trajectories could emerge in response to a world in constant transformation. The publication Radicale24 marked a natural and collective conclusion to this chapter, shaped by all those who took part in the project.

Following the closing of Radicale1924, I am now returning to my own artistic practice, entering a new phase of personal creations.