Biography
Born in 1989, in Belgium, Alexander Vantournhout studied Cyr wheel and juggling at the ESAC circus arts school and contemporary dance at P.A.R.T.S. (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios) in Brussels. In 2004, he created Caprices, a solo dance piece to music by Salvatore Sciarrino. Then came Aneckxander (2015), his second solo, co-created with Bauke Lievens, which won the CircusNext Prize, the Young Theatre Prize and the Audience Prize at Theater Aan Zee (Oostende, 2015) and the Aerowaves network. In 2017, he worked again with Bauke Lievens on his first duet, Raphael.
In 2018, Vantournhout created La Rose en Céramique, a movement solo accompanying a text by Scali Delpeyrat, performed at the Avignon Festival. Soon afterwards, he choreographed Red Haired Men, a piece for four male dancers. In Screws (2019), four dancer-acrobats lead the audience on a trail of reverberating micro-performances, ranging from short solos and duets to intricate group pieces. In Through the Grapevine (2020), Vantournhout returns to the duet and the purity of corporal forms. The performance highlights the body’s creative and kinetic potential as well as its physical limitations, a theme found throughout his work. In Contre-jour (2021), he limits himself to the role of choreographer and gives the floor to five performers from a variety of backgrounds: dance, musicals, circus. In 2022, after several collective works, he returned to dancing solo in VanThorhout. The Foreshadow premiere takes place in July 2023 at Julidans, Amsterdam.
Alexander Vantournhout has made two films on dance, Screws & Stones (2019) and Snakearms (2021). The latter was selected for the TheaterFestival and the Cinedans Festival. He is artist in residence at the Viernulvier arts centre in Ghent, and an associate artist at CentQuatre in Paris. He is also cultural ambassador for the City of Roeselare.