Neues Werk

For Thomas Hauert, improvisation is not primarily a means of expressing oneself, but rather a means of creating and composing movements. Is it possible to free the body from the limits of thought? If you let it, it will find more complex and exciting movements than your brain could come up with.

Hauert founded the company ZOO at the end of the 90s. With a relatively constant constellation of dancers throughout, he has been exploring the tension between freedom and restriction in dance ever since. When dancers improvise together in a group, they have to find a new way of dealing with control. Improvisation can be very purposeful, it can give a group a common focus for their practice. Tasks, rules and restrictions can disrupt the conditioning of the body in such a way that something unexpected emerges. Freedom and resistance, individual and group, order and disorder, formlessness and form.

Thomas Hauert

Thomas Hauert founded his company ZOO in Brussels in 1998. ‘Cows in Space’ was his first piece, which was immediately honoured at the Rencontres de Seine-Saint-Denis/Bagnolet. Since then, the company has developed more than 21 pieces. In addition to his work for ZOO, Hauert has been a guest choreographer for the Zurich Ballet, Toronto Dance Theatre, Candoco Dance Company, Ballet Junior de Genève and the Ballet de Lorraine, among others. Inspired by his choreographic work, Hauert developed an internationally recognised teaching method based on his movement research with ZOO. Since 2013, he has been the artistic director of the Bachelor's programme in contemporary dance at La Manufacture, the Lausanne School of Performing Arts.