Isabella Soupart

Isabella Soupart is a Belgian choreographer, director, dancer and visual artist of Polish-Ukrainian origin, based in Brussels. A recipient of the 2019 SACD Choreography Award – Belgium and a 2007 Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative laureate, she has developed for more than twenty years a body of work at the crossroads of dance, performance, music theatre, opera, cinema and visual arts.

Her work was nominated for the 2019 Total Theatre Awards in Edinburgh and the 2019 Maeterlinck Critics’ Awards in Brussels. In 2019, she was also named White & Case Woman Artist of the Year. In 2007, she was selected for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative in New York, where she met her mentor, director and artist Julie Taymor.

From the beginning of her career, Isabella Soupart has developed a minimalist and transversal choreographic language, attentive to the relationships between bodies, places and memory. Her stage practice, closely connected to cinema, draws on the concrete elements of reality and on the specific qualities of each space, architecture, light, acoustics, textures, circulation and aesthetic atmosphere, which become materials for the writing of the work.

Each new location thus participates in the writing and rewriting of the work. When entering a new space, Isabella Soupart questions its proportions, perspectives, circulation, light, acoustics and the relationships between bodies. The space is not simply a setting: it becomes a partner in the creative process, transforming the way the work is constructed and perceived.

The spectator’s position is central to her research. In museums and architectural spaces, audiences may be invited to move through the work, change their point of view, move away from it or return to it. The experience of time is transformed accordingly: the work may unfold over an extended duration, allowing spectators to choose their own path, pace and relationship to what is taking place.

Through her creations, Isabella Soupart explores questions of intimacy, memory, resistance and freedom, while examining what bodies carry from their individual and collective histories. The body becomes a site of memory, experience and transformation, but also a space in which tensions between the individual, the collective and the political can emerge.

Through dance, performance, image and sound, she develops a form of stage writing in which reality, space, bodies, time and the spectator’s gaze all contribute to the construction of the work.

She has collaborated with visual artists Michel François and Jonathan Sullam, video and visual artist Kurt d’Haeseleer, choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, lighting designer Jim Clayburgh, as well as with numerous musicians, composers, producers and visual artists, including Walter Hus, Antoine Pierre, Guy Vandromme, Alain Franco, Thomas Turine and Silas Bieri.

Her artistic career has also included collaborations with the MP4 Quartet, photographer Danny Willems, Belgian-Swedish duo Victoria+Jean, Rubén Martinez Orio (Ictus), Jacob Hus, Arto Van Roey, David Achenberg, as well as with numerous artists working across music, cinema, theatre, dance and visual arts.

Her productions have been presented on national and international stages and at numerous festivals, including Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg (KVS), Ars Musica Festival, Festival d’Avignon IN, Red Cat Theater in Los Angeles, Teatre Lliure in Barcelona, Burgtheater in Vienna, Théâtre de la Ville, Théâtre de la Bastille and Théâtre National de Chaillot in Paris, Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon, Maison de la Danse in Lyon, Charleroi danse, Concertgebouw Bruges, Les Brigittines, Les Halles, Festival Artonov, Fondation blan, as well as at Expo 2025 Osaka and in museums and cultural institutions in Belgium and internationally.

Alongside her choreographic work, Isabella Soupart continues to work as an actress in film and theatre. She became known to a wider audience through her roles in The Son by the Dardenne brothers and Madonnen by Maria Speth, alongside Olivier Gourmet and Sandra Hüller.

Throughout her work, Isabella Soupart creates a constant dialogue between the living, space and perception. She uses choreography as a tool for creation and transformation, but also as a way of questioning the traces of memory, forms of resistance and the possibilities of freedom.