Alban Richard

While pur­su­ing stud­ies in lit­er­at­ure and music, Alban Richard turned to dance, con­vinced that he had found his true mode of expres­sion and quickly devel­op­ing a desire to cre­ate per­form­ances. He has per­formed, among oth­ers, for cho­reo­graph­ers as diverse as Odile Duboc, Olga de Soto, Ros­alind Crisp, Christine Gaigg, Karine Saporta, Chris­ti­an Bourigault…

In 2000, he foun­ded the ensemble l’Abrupt, for which he cre­ated more than thirty works, driv­en by a clear ambi­tion: with each new cre­ation, to invent a new body and a new lan­guage. Work­ing with­in a research-based approach, Alban Richard does not impose a recog­niz­able ges­tur­al sig­na­ture, meth­od, or style; instead, he exper­i­ments anew with each piece, most often in close rela­tion to a music­al score per­formed live. Each pro­ject opens like an eru­dite and sens­it­ive labor­at­ory, delving into struc­tur­al and form­al ques­tions through music, writ­ing, and com­pos­i­tion. Nev­er to repro­duce, always to start again from scratch—even if that means mov­ing from expres­sion­ism, with a piece such as Luis­ance (2008), to more abstract works like Breath­is­dan­cing (2017) or Vivace (2018).

“Ques­tion­ing music­al form­al struc­tures, peri­ods, and works inev­it­ably leads to a very dif­fer­ent per­spect­ive,” the cho­reo­graph­er states. “One does not dance in the same way to Xena­kis (Pléi­ades, 2011), to medi­ev­al music (Nom­brer les étoiles, 2016), or to Arnaud Rebotini (Fix Me, 2018). The place of flows, rhythmi­city, even bod­ily tech­nique, the rela­tion­ship to pulse and weight—all of this must be rethought each time.”

At the end of a pro­cess that is often long and intense, each new piece asserts itself as an autonom­ous object, con­struct­ing its own logic, its own life, its own organ­ic qual­ity. Alban Richard devel­ops his cre­ations in col­lab­or­a­tion with vari­ous part­ners, both long-stand­ing and new, weav­ing togeth­er dif­fer­ent scores—movement, music, light­ing, costumes—thus cre­at­ing a sin­gu­lar frame­work. His way of work­ing with per­formers, through onstage writ­ing nour­ished by con­strained impro­visa­tions, allows each indi­vidu­al to devel­op their own dance through an act­ive presence.

In con­stant dia­logue with the music­al world, the cho­reo­graph­er col­lab­or­ates with the ensembles Alla francesca, Les Talens Lyriques, Per­cus­sions de Stras­bourg, Ensemble inter­con­tem­po­rain, IRCAM, and the ensembles Cairn, Instant Don­né, Altern­ance, L’Achéron, as well as com­posers Arnaud Rebotini, Sebasti­an Rivas, Erwan Ker­avec, Jérôme Com­bi­er, Laurent Per­ri­er, Raphaël Cendo, Robin Leduc, Paul Clift, Wen Liu, Mat­thew Barn­son, Ezra, Simo Cell, Florentin Ginot…

A pro­lif­ic cho­reo­graph­er pro­du­cing sev­er­al pieces each year, Alban Richard is reg­u­larly invited by bal­let com­pan­ies and ensembles to cre­ate com­mis­sioned works, both inter­na­tion­ally (Canada, Lithuania, Nor­way) and in France. He also works out­side tra­di­tion­al per­form­ance venues—in places such as the Centre Pomp­idou, the Louvre, the Musée d’Art Mod­erne de la Ville de Par­is, the Musée du quai Branly–Jacques Chir­ac, and the Guimet Museum—to con­ceive site-spe­cif­ic per­form­ances. A curi­ous, mul­ti­fa­ceted artist, Alban Richard views his craft as an artis­an­al prac­tice nour­ished by encoun­ters and daily ques­tion­ing. Each new com­mis­sion offers him the oppor­tun­ity to explore unex­pec­ted dir­ec­tions, to dis­cov­er, and to remain in a con­stant state of learning.

The ensemble l’Abrupt (2000–2015) was artist-in-res­id­ence in around ten ven­ues (Théâtre de Vanves, Centre nation­al de la danse in Pantin, For­um du Blanc-Mes­nil, Théâtre Louis Aragon in Tremblay-en-France, Scène nationale d’Orléans, Le Prisme in Saint-Quentin-en-Yve­lines, Chail­lot – Théâtre nation­al de la danse, Théâtre Paul Élu­ard in Bezons, Théâtre 71 – Scène nationale in Malakoff), thus work­ing with­in a wide range of con­texts and address­ing very dif­fer­ent issues.

Draw­ing on all these res­id­ency exper­i­ences, Alban Richard was appoin­ted Artist­ic Dir­ect­or of the Centre choré­graph­ique nation­al de Caen en Nor­man­die in 2015, with a pro­ject groun­ded both in an authori­al approach and in work con­nec­ted to ter­rit­or­ies, focus­ing on audi­ence empower­ment and the devel­op­ment of dance pres­ence in rur­al areas.

After ten years dir­ect­ing this nation­al insti­tu­tion, Alban Richard foun­ded Oases in Bretagne in 2026, a new asso­ci­ation car­ry­ing for­ward the expert­ise and exper­i­ence of 25 years of cre­ations and artist­ic pro­jects rooted in loc­al ter­rit­or­ies. Centered on the ques­tion, “How can we make all our bod­ies vis­ible in soci­ety?”, Oases makes it pos­sible to ima­gine a mul­ti­pli­city of pro­jects that place dance and cre­ation at the heart of a civic and polit­ic­al vis­ion of society.