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@yoann_bourgeois Yoann Bourgeois is an internationally renowned multidisciplinary artist, choreographer and artistic director whose work exists at the intersection of dance, circus, theatre, music, visual art, and film. His practice is rooted in an ongoing exploration of movement, balance, gravity, and the relationship between the body and physical forces, transforming these ideas into poetic and often breathtaking visual experiences.
Bourgeois trained at both the Centre national des arts du cirque de Châlons-en-Champagne and the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine d’Angers, and later worked as a dancer with choreographer Maguy Marin. In 2010, he founded his own company and began developing a distinctive body of work that challenged the boundaries between circus and contemporary choreography. From 2016 to 2022, he served as director of the Centre Chorégraphique National de Grenoble (CCN2), becoming the first circus artist to lead a French national choreographic institution.
His acclaimed works include Fugue, Celui qui tombe (He Who Falls), Scala, Passants, Approach 12, Approach 17, Little Song, Requiem, and I Wonder Where the Dreams I Don’t Remember Go, created in collaboration with artists and institutions including Nederlands Dans Theater, the Philharmonie de Paris, and Patrick Watson. His work has also been presented in landmark spaces including the Panthéon in Paris, where his gravity-defying performance The Mechanics of History inspired the film The Great Ghosts, co-directed with Louise Narboni, which received international recognition at dance film festivals for its innovative translation of his live performance language to the screen.
Beyond the stage, Bourgeois has brought his creative vision to music, fashion, film, and advertising, collaborating with artists including Harry Styles, FKA twigs, and Coldplay, as well as major houses and brands including Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Tiffany & Co., Apple, Gap, Nina Ricci, and Viktor&Rolf. For Louis Vuitton’s Fall/Winter 2022 Men’s show, he served as theatrical director and choreographer in collaboration with Virgil Abloh, creating an aerial performance built around suspension, illusion, and weightlessness.
His choreography for Harry Styles’s “As It Was” became one of his most widely recognized screen works, earning an MTV Video Music Award nomination for Best Choreography and inspiring his choreography for Styles’s performance at the 2023 Grammy Awards.
With projects spanning live performance, choreography, film, fashion, and visual art, Yoann Bourgeois continues to develop, each time, a singular universe in which physical forces become a language for exploring human experience, fragility, connection, and wonder.