Zoë Demoustier (1995) is a performer and choreographer. The body is always the starting point for her strong visual performances. From movement she makes links with current and committed topics and creates documentary, choreographic work.
Since 2022 she is connected to Ultima Vez as choreographer, resulting in the big-stage production What Remains, selected for the Belgian Theatre Festival. In the same year her production Choeur Battant/Beating Choir, a co-production between BRONKS (Brussel BE) and Le Carrousel (Quebec CA), premiered.
Zoë made her debut with the solo Unfolding an Archive. In the same year she became ambassador of Dance Day trying to bring dance to and with the people. Zoë worked as performer and assistant with, among others, Kabinet K, Michiel Vandevelde, Alma Söderberg/Manyone, Iris Bouche/Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, David Weber Krebs and Marcelo Evelin.
As a choreographer she aims to make work that speaks to a broad audience, bringing different bodies, ages and abilities on stage in a sharp and poetical movement language.
“Demoustier does not make a fetish of the number by our name, but shows how we carry all these lifetimes with us and how new alliances are hidden in them. I wonder how this promising young choreographer will find her own voice in the coming years.” - De Standaard(Charlotte De Somviele, 20/02/2023)
About the work
She got in contact with dance at the age of 7 in a production of Kabinet K and fABULEUS. In 2013 Zoë started Mime in Amsterdam at the Academy for Theatre and Dance, where she developed her ambition for performing and choreographing. In 2018 she graduated in Directing at the Royal Institute for Theatre, Cinema and Sound (RITCS) were she defined her makership. Since 2019 she started to create her own work.
Unfolding an Archive (2021) is a dance solo in which Zoë unfolds the image archive of her father who worked as a war journalist for more than 25 years. The search for a relationship to the imagery of world events with which she grew up is like a movement from far and near. In an attempt at a reconstruction, she brings the archive to life and dismantles the mechanisms hidden behind the archive images. This solo can be seen as her debute were she found her language combining contemporary dance, Mime corporel and documentary work. She is still touring with it and aspiring to perform it in different countries that are part of the archive and to go in conversation with an audience in order to expand the archive of collective memories, sound, images and movement.
What Remains (2023) is Zoë’s first big stage production and collaboration with Ultima Vez. Coming from the love and urgency to work intergenerational Zoë brings a divers cast on stage of dancers between 5 and 75. From the need to address topical issues combined with personal stories Zoë started to visit retirement homes for elderly people (with dementia) and schools. Facilitating conversations with children and old people about loss, death, and memories. All this documentary research and stories where the starting point of the dance performance What Remains resulting in a sharp and poetical language and got selected for the Belgium Theatre Festival.
In the same year Zoë premiered in Montréal with Beating Choir/Choeur Battant (2023), a co-production between Le Carrousel (CA) and BRONKS (BE). On stage we see 6 youngsters from different countries, being the ambassador of their generation ‘Z’. Since the Covid periode, Zoë started to collect voices of this generation. Asking them how they feel, how they look at their generation and the future. With more than 100 voices in different languages and coming from different countries a soundscape was made, that can be live manipulated and danced on by the 6 young and strong dancers.
Zoë started to dance when she was 7 in a production of Kabinet K and fABULEUS. Due to this experience Zoë has a love for the work with non-professionals and performers of different ages and abilities. She is always searching for the authentic and the unexpected, trying to keep on questioning expectations of the idea of dance and the bodies we look at and work with. But most important to create a space to bring real people and stories to the stage.
From the idea to bring theatre and dance to the people she started to create work for young people when she graduated resulting in two production for young audience with fABULEUS Nesten 4+ (2019) and Wat was en wat nu 8+ (2020). She still believes that dance has to be accessible for all ages and people.
In 2020 Zoë was asked to be ambassador of Day of Dance where the goal is to make dance loved by a broad audience. Zoë also founded Platform In De Maak together with Oihana Azpillaga, Barbara T’ Jonck and Eline Dewaele. A horizontal platform for new makers in the performing arts to share knowledge and experiences and to create space and contexts to show work (in progress) in a safe frame and to actively build on the the performing arts field and generation of today.
Apart from the creations she makes, Zoë is active as teacher in different art schools and Universities (AHK Amsterdam, KHB Brussels, KCA Antwerp, Danscentrum Aike Raes). She is also engaged in different social artistic work such as OKAN and LOUD, projects by the city of Leuven with newcomers or the project Road to Nowhere that she created together with Yelena Schmitz and a mix of inhabitants from Brussels.
Zoë has planned a new production ‘Hear the Silence’, on the impact and role of music in war (première October 2025).