Maud Blandel
Creative Crossroads Cycle Two 2025–2026
Initially trained as a dancer, Maud Blandel is a choreographer living in Lausanne (CH). She completed her training with a Master's degree in «theatre direction» at La Manufacture (Lausanne), and followed the Work.Master in performance at la HEAD in Geneva. In 2015, she founded the association I L K A and began her own activity. Her approach to dramaturgy, her taste for transformation and her concern for musicality lead her to create singular and powerfully composed choreographic objects.
Her creations include Touch down (2015), Lignes de conduite (2018), Diverti Menti (2020), Double Septet (2021) and L'œil nu (2023) - Swiss Award for choreographic production 2023.
In her recent works, Maud is interested in exploring physicalities and states of presence resulting from a constant negotiation between principles dictated by/for the collective and individual expressivity. Recently involved in the sound creation of L'oeil nu, she now gives sound and music a decisive place as a genuine dramaturgical tool in her creations.
Alongside her work, Maud has collaborated with artists such as Cindy Van Acker, Heiner Goebbels and Romeo Castellucci, and is currently very active as a dramaturg with young performing artists.
Maud has been artist-in-residence at the Arsenic (Lausanne) since 2018, and will be associate artist at the CNDC in Angers (2024 - 2026) and at Bonlieu scène nationale in Annecy (2024 - 2027). Since 2016, her work has been supported by Parallèle based in Marseille.
La Rumeur
Performance by Maud Blandel for and with 20 students of CNDC d'Angers
In its simplest definition, rumour refers to a confused and indistinct noise circulating in an assembly. Approaching this notion from a scenic point of view, Maud Blandel asked the twenty students at the Cndc-Angers to create a piece whose compositional and performative issues are based on the logic of propagation.
Here, the rumour is first and foremost a musical one, since it consists of rhythmic motifs that never cease to circulate. Passed on in the form of gift-giving, imitation, transformation or hybridisation of gesture, the rumour bounces back and forth between bodies. It operates like a language, designed to be transmitted and distorted. It rejects uniform, standardised bodies. It celebrates the sharing of energy. It reveals itself in and through the collective. And it (im)patiently hopes for uprising.
Read more and get tickets here.
La Rumeur
10 April 2025 at CCN Nantes
L’œil nu
Performance by Maud Blandel
They say a star begins to die when its balance fades and its hydrogen supply is empty. When that happens, it slowly degenerates until – depending on its size – it either violently explodes or its heart collapses. For this piece, French and Swiss choreographer Maud Blandel associates the astrophysics phenomenon of pulsars to the tragic sound memory of the explosion of her father’s heart. By translating physics principles like rotation, gravity, and periodicity, The Naked Eye mobilizes six dancers and transforms the scenic space into an observation spot. What do we really see faced with a degenerating body (be it a star, a human body or a collective body)? More than an autobiographical account, Blandel plays with questions of scale, tragedy and transforms memory into images – showcasing how it persists, as well as its loops and blanks, its shadows and sparks of creativity.
L’œil nu
23–24 April 2025 at CCN Caen
14 June 2025 at CNDC Angers
4–5 July 2025 at Santarcangelo Festival
Maud Blandel in Sofia
Residency
Maud Blandel is the artist in residence during the 18th edition of the "Antistatic" festival. Her project transposes the links between war and patriarchy onto the stage in the form of a grotesque choreographic satire. It is inspired by the epistolary fiction, Three Guineas, published in 1938, where Virginia Woolf gives form to the response of an ‘educated woman’ to the question her interlocutor, an ‘educated man’, addresses her: "According to you, what can be done to avoid war?”
On 17–18 May Maud is giving a workshop in Sofia: It is an invitation to explore her approach to “open” composition, based on notions of interdependence and reciprocity. Through a series of collective practices and improvisation exercises, the workshop will invite participants to explore the gaze, the walk and the space between two bodies as tools for developing a common language.
Tackling questions of extended listening, presence and performativity, the workshop will also be a time for conversation about the respective choreographic practices and experiences of the participants.
Find more details / sign up here.
Without Distance Platform 2025
The Without Distance educational platform is an integral part of the International Festival for Contemporary Dance and Performance Antistatic in Sofia. This year's programme, taking place from 7–9 May 2025, features three lectures by Javor Gradev, Boyan Manchev and Neli Mitewa, alongside a workshop led by Maud Blandel.