Christine De Smedt

Christine De Smedt (1963) is a Belgian dancer and choreographer.

Her artistic work is situated on the boundary between dance / performance, choreography, artistic coordination and artistic projects of various kinds.

After completing her studies in criminology, Christine De Smedt became interested in dance and performance and began to study different techniques for motion research.

From 1991 to 2012, Christine De Smedt was a member of les ballets C de la B, the Ghent dance company founded by Alain Platel, which was also home for a long time to Hans van den Broeck, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Koen Augustijnen.

She danced in Mussen (Alain Platel, 1991) and was assistant director on How to approach a dog (Hans Van den Broeck, 1992).

In 1992, Christine De Smedt was part of the interdisciplinary SKITE project (laboratoire de nouvelles formes chorégraphiques) in Paris, where her first artistic encounter with the American choreographer Meg Stuart took place.

Christine De Smedt started her own work in the period when she was a member of les ballets C de la B. Her debut was the dance solo La force fait l'union fait la force (1994).

She also collaborated with Meg Stuart and her company Damaged Goods between 1995 and 1999.

In addition, she worked as a dancer on No One's Watching (Meg Stuart / Damaged Goods, 1995) and Splayed Mind Out (Meg Stuart / Damaged Goods and Gary Hill, 1997) ). Together with Meg Stuart and choreographer / dancer David Hernandez, she initiated the multi-disciplinary improvisation project Crash Landing (1996-1999).

In 1996, she danced in the remake of Stuart's debut choreography Disfigure Study (Meg Stuart / Damaged Goods, 1991), and assisted the choreographer as a coach for this remake.

One of her best-known projects from that period is 9x9 (2000), a large-scale choreographic project that was realized in 15 different cities in Europe and Canada.

The starting point for the project, in which the choreographer was working with participants of diverse backgrounds such as elderly, young people and photographers, was the human mass.

From 2003 to 2005 she was the artistic coordinator of les ballets C de la B. In 2010 she initiated the first Summer Intensive, a residence in studio 3 at les ballets C de la B.

Furthermore, she collaborated on the video installation Dead Reckoning (2008) by Philipp Gehmacher and Vladimir Miller.

With Eszter Salamon, Christine De Smedt developed in 2009 Transformers, a research project for a group choreography through workshops and artists' residences in Brussels, Madrid, PAF-St.

Erme, Mexico City, Vienna, Tokyo and Stockholm.

II in Ostend, she created in 2010 together with Mette Edvardsen the mass choreography The Long Piece.

Another well-known production by Christine De Smedt is Untitled 4 (2012), based on four interviews with the choreographers and dancers Alain Platel, Jonathan Burrows, Eszter Salamon and Xavier Le Roy, and in which she increasingly becomes at the same time the portrayed persons themselves.

For the festival Dansand!

Together with Eszter Salamon, she created the duet dance#2 (2012), and with Myriam Van Imschoot PickUpVoices (2008), that mixed historical research with performance.

Christine De Smedt was Pedagogical Coordinator of the Training Cycle 2013-2016 at P.A.R.T.S., the International School of Contemporary Dance in Brussels.

Own work:

With others:

In May 2014, she collaborated on Spatial Confessions, a four-day program of Bojana Cvejic in Tate Modern, which examined through choreographic experiments publicness in places exhibiting contemporary art.

As a dancer, she also collaborated on Gerhard Richter, une pièce pour le théâtre (Mårten Spångberg, 2017), Oidipous, my foot (Jan Ritsema, 2011), Artificial Nature Project (Mette Ingvartsen, 2012), Project (Xavier Le Roy, 2003), Low Pieces (Xavier Le Roy, 2011), Temporary Title (Xavier Le Roy, 2015), nvsbl (Eszter Salamon, 2006) and dance#1/Driftworks (Eszter Salamon, 2008).