José Besprosvany

José Besprosvany ( October 13, 1959) is a dancer, choreographer, director and teacher, who has developed his career in Europe. He has been noted as one of Belgium’s contemporary dance innovators and reformers. He left Mexico as a teenager to study theater and dance in Paris and Brussels, after dancing and doing choreography with several companies, Besprosvany began his own in 1986, which has had at least one production each year since its inception. In the late1990s, Besprosvany revamped his choreography to the current dominant style, which blends various arts and media, with themes focusing on the relationship of dance and narrative along with non-European cultures. His productions have toured various European countries and have performed in Mexico as well, twice at the Festival Internacional Cervantino.

Besprosvany was born in Mexico, a second-generation Mexican whose Russian Jewish grandparents immigrated to country. In 1978, at age seventeen, he left Mexico to find better opportunities in the arts in Europe, first to France then Belgium to study theater and dance. He has lived in Belgium since. He first studied mime, movement, acting and mask play in Paris under Jacques Lecoq, at his school, then moved onto Brussels to study modern dance under Maurice Bejart at the Ecole Mudra. One of his main influences at Mudra was musician and teacher Fernand Schirren.

Besprosvany continues to live in Brussels and speaks French, English, Spanish and Hebrew, with some Dutch and Italian.

After finishing at the Mudra School, Besprosvany danced with Bejart´s 20th Century Ballet for two years, from 1981 to 1983. He left to focus on a choreography career, and in this capacity has collaborated with the Mossoux-Bonté Company, and those of Pierre Droulers, Michèle Noiret and Michèle-Anne de Mey.

In 1986, he founded the Compagnie José Besprosvany, which since then has produced at least one production every year, and has toured in various European countries and Mexico. The first productions of this company include Momentum (1984), Evento (1986), and Tempéraments (1988), along with Von Heute auf Morgen (1989), Apollon la Nuit (1990), and Retours (1992). In 1992 he created the choreographies for two operas for the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie: Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Pascal Dusapin’s Medeamaterial. More recent works include a retelling of the story of Oedipus, which premiered in Belgium in 2013, then toured Paris and Cyprus before becoming his second production at the Festival Internacional Cervantino in Mexico. The first was Cuarteto in 1995.

Besprosvany has also worked in theater and film. He played the part of a dance professor in the movie Just Friends by Marc-Henri Wienberg as well as a number of roles in films by Marie André. As a director he has worked on projects such as Elles (1996) by Nicole Malinconi, Les Indifférents by Odilon-Jean Perier (1996), L’Invisible by Philippe Blasband and Prometheus Bound adapted by Henry Bauchau (1998), In 1992, he created a dance video called Andrés for television, which received recognition at the II Coreografo Electronica in Italy, at the Bert Leysen Prijs in Belgium and at the Danscreen in Germany. He directed a short film called Le Dession (2004) which premiered at the Molodist Festival in Kiev, winning a Prix du Meilleur for short film at the Salento Finibus Terrae Festival. The work La Princesse de Babylone (2004) received an award for best show and Oedipe (2013) received a nomination for best staging from the Francophone Community of Belgium. Apropos de Butterfly (2007) received the Audience Choice Award and the New Art Forms Award at the Rainbow Festival in Russia.

Besprosvany began his career studying both theater and dance as he considers them complimentary arts. His first productions such as Momentum (1984), Evento (1986), and Tempéraments (1988) were minimalist. These were followed by productions that questioned the relationship between modern and classical languages, Von Heute auf Morgen (1989), Apollon la Nuit (1990), and Retours (1992).

Besprosvany’s work with his company focuses on two themes: exploring the relationship between narrative and dance and exploring non-European cultures. Early works of the former include Cuarteto (1993), Hombre Alado (1995) and Lara (1996), with Cuarteto, based on a text by Marguerite Duras, performed by two dancers, a cellist and an actress. In 1997 he directed L’invisible, a story about an uprooted foreigner. Other works in this vein include Belle à mourir (1999) based on the life of Mamé Alan. The works Triptico (2002) and 9 (2005) . The 2013 production Oedipe shows influence from Asian shadow puppetry.

In the late 1990s, Besprosvany decided that his choreography was still to conventional, and began the development of the style that dominates today. One element of this work is the blending of various artistic elements, starting with Dos y Dos (1999), which combined contemporary dance with live flamenco music. More recent works have incorporated puppetry such as La Princesse de Babylone (2003) along with Butterfly(2004), La Belle au bois de Dandaka (2007) Prométhée enchainé (2010) and Récitations (2009). The 2013 production of Oedipus, a version adapted by Olivier Kemeid, includes speech, music, video and choreographed movement. He uses multimedia in his production to create a concept called “total spectacle,” stating that he has become bored with only one means of expression, and has an interest in exploring how the various arts can work together. However, he states that this is not easy in Europe where the arts are strongly separated.

Besprosvany’s work shows an interest in updated version of classical texts, stating that their themes remain relevant today. He has done several versions of the story of Prometheus, and Oediper includes references to current social issues.