Damien Jalet

Damien Jalet is a Belgian-French choreographer and dancer born in Uccle, Belgium, in 1976. He studied theatre in Brussels before moving into contemporary dance, completing further training in New York and developing an interest in ethnomusicology and vocal traditions. His early career included work with Wim Vandekeybus and a long creative association with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, with whom he co-created works including d’avant and Babel(words).

Jalet’s independent choreography has expanded across dance, visual art, opera, cinema, music and fashion. Works including Les Médusés, Yama, Vessel, Skid and Omphalos use bodies in relation to gravity, landscape, sculpture and ritual. His film choreography includes Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria, Thom Yorke and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Anima and Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez, while music projects have included work with Madonna. France appointed him Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2013, followed by promotion to Officer in 2022.

In 2015 Jalet collaborated with Hussein Chalayan on Gravity Fatigue, Chalayan’s first theatrical work, premiered at Sadler’s Wells in London. Chalayan served as artistic director and designer while Jalet choreographed the dancers, bringing fashion’s attention to material, silhouette and transformation into sustained bodily movement. The project occupies a distinct place in both careers: clothing, choreography and stage space were developed as one performance environment without being presented as a seasonal fashion collection.

Jalet builds choreography from the physical conditions acting on the body. Gravity, balance, friction, elevation, collapse and resistance can determine the movement vocabulary, giving dancers the appearance of being shaped by a landscape or material force. This produces a sculptural quality in which posture and group formation carry as much weight as conventional dance phrasing.

Collaboration is central to his work. Visual artists, musicians, filmmakers, designers and architects can supply a material or spatial premise that changes how dancers move. Jalet uses those encounters to alter scale and perception: a sloped stage, a sculptural object, a costume or an architectural setting can become an active partner in the choreography.

Gravity Fatigue made that approach compatible with Chalayan’s fashion language. Garments could conceal, extend or release the body, while the choreography gave those changes duration and force. Jalet’s wider work follows the same principle, using the body as a responsive structure whose movement reveals the physical and symbolic conditions surrounding it.