Astragales

Astragales is a contemporary dance company led by Belgian choreographer Michèle Anne De Mey. First set up in 1989, Astragales has an international reputation although it is firmly rooted in its native Belgium. Michèle Anne De Mey works with a contemporary dance style interacting with other disciplines with the help of strong partnerships and long-standing friendships, as well as new encounters.

Astragales

Belgian choreographer Michèle Anne De Mey (Brussels, 1959) attended Mudra, the Brussels-based school founded by Maurice Béjart, from 1976 to 1979. She gave contemporary dance a new direction even starting with her early work: Passé Simple (1981) and the two-handers Ballatum (1984) and Face à Face (1986). At the same time, she worked with Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker in Fase (1982), Rosas danst Rosas (1983) and Elena’s Aria (1986).

In 1989, Michèle Anne De Mey set up the non-profit company Astragale, a platform for creating, producing and spreading her work. Consequently, she devised Sinfonia Eroica: a milestone in her career, a heroic, romantic piece of work that enjoyed immediate international success and toured all over the world. Based in Studio St-Josse, Astragales has staged thirty or so shows over a fifteen-year period there, a place that brings together creativity, training, workshops and regular internships. A true nurturing ground for dance, these “Studio” years have also allowed young writer-choreographers to stage their debut shows.

Michèle Anne De Mey uses Studio St-Josse to develop a world of polymorphous choreography.

This takes root in a strongly dramaturgical context which first and foremost puts the actor in a specific stage/audience relationship, between intimacy and emotion, narrative and deconstruction. His or her purpose as an artist it to break down boundaries. His or her work therefore leads him or her to develop more and complicity with other author-artists in order to enrich the writing and his or her choreographic research; whether they are composers, film makers, visual artists, actors, circus performers, painters, dramaturges… She does not stop at the restrictions of these definitions.

In 2005, Michèle Anne De Mey became joint director of Charleroi-Danses, at the Centre chorégraphique de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles. There, she revived her landmark work, Sinfonia Eroica and subsequently created P.L.U.G, KOMA and Neige. In 2011, at the VIA Festival, with film maker Jaco Van Dormael and a group of creatives, she devised Kiss & Cry, an original, ambitious show that brings together film, dance, text, theatre and a DIY of geniuses. The show is an instant unqualified international success. After over 300 performances, Kiss & Cry has been seen by over 180,000 spectators in eight different languages and thirty or so countries. In 2012, she gave her performer and long-standing colleague Gabriella Iacono, Lamento-Solo pour Gabriella.  A show about intimacy and revelation, it was a critical success. In July 2015, at the Festival au Carré, she devised Memories, a personal, introspective and intense show. In December 2015, with Le Manège de Mons, she staged Cold Blood, which brought her back together with the creatives of Kiss & Cry and director Jaco Van Dormael. The show was as successful as its predecessor and the press awarded this new, atypical, modern and intense piece of work the Doublé Triomphal .

At the end of 2016, Astragale changed its name to Astragales to convey the multiple aspects of its work. The company became the main project leader of choreography in its native Belgium and throughout the world.