Frédéric Flamand
Right from the very start, Frédéric Flamand’s career has been characterised by three main elements: encounter, dialogue and a certain utopia tinged with realism. He set up the group Plan K in 1973, using it to question the status and representation of the human body by integrating visual arts and audio-visual technology into the living spectacle, and thus laying the foundations for the interdisciplinary approach which still fuels his work today.
He opened a multi-arts centre in 1979 in an old 4.000 m2 sugar refinery in Brussels, where he created Quarantaine (1980), Scan Lines (1084) and If Pyramids were square (1986). Artists from different disciplines were also welcomed there.
In 1989, at the invitation of Gérard Mortier, director of the Théâtre royal de La Monnaie, Frédéric Flamand created La Chute d’Icare with the Venetian visual artist Fabrizio Plessi, the first part of a trilogy which was followed by Titanic (1992) and Ex Machina (1994).
In 1991, Frédéric Flamand was appointed artistic director of the Ballet Royal de Wallonie which he renamed Charleroi/Danses. It was after this appointment that he worked more intensively on integrating classical and contemporary techniques in his work, convinced that it is more fruitful to make them talk to each other than set them against each other.
In 1996, Frédéric Flamand started reflecting on the relationship between dance and architecture, both of them being arts that structure space. This was how Moving Target and then E.J.M. 1 and E.J.M. 2 came about with the Now York architects Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, followed by Metapolis (2000) with the Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid, the 2004 winner of the Pritzker-Prize, and then The Future of Work for Hannover’s Expo 2000 with the architect Jean Nouvel, with whom he also created Body/Work/Leisure (2000).
The Venice Biennale offered him the post of artistic director of its first International Contemporary Dance Festival in 2003. He inaugurated the festival with Silent Collisions, produced with the Californian architect Thom Mayne (Pritzker Prize 2005).
Frédéric Flamand has been teaching at the University IUAV of Venice since April 2004, running interdisciplinary creative workshops centred on dance.
Frédéric Flamand was appointed Director of the Ballet National de Marseille and the École Nationale Supérieure de Danse de Marseille in September 2004.
He is also an Officier des Ordres des Arts et Lettres de la République Francaise. His productions have been performed on major stages in Europe, the United States, Brazil, Japan…
Dominique Perrault
The architect and urban designer Dominique Perrault rapidly earned himself an international reputation by winning competitions to design the French National Library in 1989 and the Olympic velodrome and swimming pool in Berlin in 1992.
He is currently working on a number of large urban projects all over the world, including the expansion of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, the creation of the Olympic tennis stadium in Manzanarès Park in Madrid, the masterplan for the centre of Donau-City and a 200 metre tower in Vienna; the new auditorium for St Petersburg’s Mariinsky Teatre, and the EWHA women’s university campus in Seoul, Korea.
As well as these large prestigious projects, Dominique Perreault works on smaller projects too. In France he built the Hôtel Industriel Jean-Baptiste Berlier in Paris, the Aplix factory near Nantes and a multimedia library in Vénissieux. In Austria he has just altered the skyline in Innsbruck’s historic city centre by creating a genuine urban island comprising the town hall, shops and a hotel. In Italy, following his redesign of the Piazza Garibaldi for the Metropolitana di Napoli, and building a pedestrian bridge in Palermo.
Whatever the size of the project, Dominique Perrault’s building transform the architectural landscape like elementary volumes in minimalist sculpture. His work for the stage is an extension of his architecture, on the one hand because it comes from the same vocabulary of simple forms, reduced to a minimum, and on the other because he pays the same amount of attention to engineering the materials he uses, continually experimenting to enhance their visual effects and physical emotions.
