Boris Charmatz is a dancer, choreographer and creator of experimental projects such as the ephemeral school Bocal, the Musée de la danse and Terrain. Keen to connect his own questions to the state of contemporary bodies, he seeks dance in unusual places, and designs hybrid shows and formats which combine creation and repertoire, theory and transmission, in a wide variety of spaces.

After studying at the Paris Opera Ballet School and the Lyon Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse, he co-wrote his first piece with Dimitri Chamblas in 1993, À bras-le-corps – a duet that the two dancers have performed ever since, and which entered the repertoire of the Paris Opera Ballet in 2017. He then created several landmark works, including Aatt enen tionon (1996), Con forts fleuve (1999) and Levée des conflits (2010), alongside working as a performer and improviser with various artists (among whom Odile Duboc, Médéric Collignon, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Tino Sehgal).

From 2009 to 2018, Boris Charmatz was the director of the Centre chorégraphique national de Rennes et de Bretagne. There, he set up the Musée de la danse, a paradox drawing its dynamic from its own contradictions, and an experimental space for thinking, practicing and turning upside down the established relationships between the audience, the art and its physical and imaginary territories. The Musée de la danse articulated the living and the reflexive, the art and the archive, creation and transmission.

In 2011, being the associated artist with the Festival d’Avignon, he created enfant in the Cour d’honneur of the Palais des papes, a piece for 26 children and 9 dancers. He also presented ‘Une école d’art pour le Festival d’Avignon’.

He was invited by MoMA (Museum of Modem Art, New York) in 2013, and staged Musée de la danse: Three Collective Gestures, a three-part project displayed all over the museum over the course of three weeks .

Following a first invitation in 2012, Boris Charmatz returned to Tate Modern (London) in 2015 with the project If Tate Modern was Musée de la danse? which included new versions of À bras-le-corps, Levée des conflits, manger, Roman Photo, expo zéro and 20 dancers for the 20th Century. The same year, he opened the dance season at the Opéra national de Paris with 20 danseurs pour le XXe siècle and invited 20 dancers from the Ballet to perform solos from the last century in the public spaces of Palais Garnier.

In May 2015 in Rennes, he presented Fous de danse, an invitation to experience dance in all its forms from midday to midnight. Further editions of this ‘choreographic assembly’, bringing together professional and amateur dancers, were later organised in Rennes (2016, 2018), as well as in Brest, Paris (Festival d’Automne, 2017) and Berlin, where Boris Charmatz was associated artist to the Volksbühne during the season 2017-2018.

In 2016, he created danse de nuit, a nocturnal performance for the urban space, and in 2017, 10000 gestes, a piece for 24 dancers. At the end of 2018, Boris Charmatz left the Centre chorégraphique national de Rennes et de Bretagne and created La Ruée at the TNB, a collective performance inspired by the book Histoire mondiale de la France (“A World History of France”) written under the direction of Patrick Boucheron.

In January 2019, he launched Terrain, a structure based in Région Hauts-de-France, developing a project of choreographic experiments without walls or roofs, inserted into the city and public space. In summer 2019, the Zürcher Theater Spektakel gave him carte blanche to take over the festival site on the edge of a lake: terrain | Boris Charmatz: Un essai à ciel ouvert. Ein Tanzgrund für Zürich was the first test of this project. For three weeks, every day, in all weathers, the public could attend collective warm-ups, workshops, performances and a symposium.

In 2020-2021, Festival d’Automne à Paris invited him for a Portrait, combining pieces from his repertoire and new creations: La Ruée, (untitled) (2000) by Tino Sehgal, La Fabrique (including the projects and performances Session Poster, Ping Pong and J’ai failli), Aatt enen tionon, 20 danseurs pour le XXe siècle et plus encore, 10000 gestes, boléro 2 by Odile Duboc, étrangler le temps, as well as La Ronde, a creation for the Grand Palais, inspired by Arthur Schnitzler’s text, and Happening Tempête for the opening of the Grand Palais Ephémère. In July 2021, he opened the Manchester International Festival with Sea Change, a performance in a street with 150 amateur and professional performers. In November of the same year, at the Opéra de Lille, he created and danced the solo SOMNOLE, which received the Syndicat de la critique award for best choreographic performance.

From August 2022 to July 2025, Boris Charmatz is the director of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. Together with Terrain, he builds an artistic project between Germany and France, dedicated to the joint development of his choreographic work and Pina Bausch’s repertoire. He presented several events in the public space in Wuppertal, including Wundertal/Sonnborner Strasse in a street (2023), and CERCLES on a football field (2024).

In September 2023, he created Liberté Cathédrale at the Mariendom, a Brutalist church in Neviges (Germany) : his first piece to bring together the Tanztheater Wuppertal Ensemble and dancers from Terrain, which was awarded as ‘Production of the Year’ by the critics gathered by German magazine TANZ. In 2024, he was the Artiste Complice of the 78th Festival d’Avignon, where he presented CERCLES, a public workshop for participants, an outdoor version of Liberté Cathédrale, and the project Forever (Immersion dans Café Müller de Pina Bausch).

Boris Charmatz is the author of several books: Entretenir/à propos d’une danse contemporaine (2003, Centre national de la danse/Les presses du réel) co-written with Isabelle Launay; Je suis une école (2009, Éditions Les Prairies Ordinaires), which recounts the adventure that was Bocal; EMAILS 2009-2010 (2013, ed. Les presses du réel in partnership with the Musée de la danse) co-signed with Jérôme Bel. His work is the subject of two monographs: a first one in English, published in 2017 by MoMA under the direction of Ana Janevski, ; a second one in German, published in 2025 by Alexander Verlag Berlin and edited by Marietta Piekenbrock.

He has directed several films, often based on choreographic material from his own pieces, shown out of the performance space and onto camera. With César Vayssié, his films include Les Disparates (1999), Levée (2014), Danse gâchée dans l’herbe and TRANSEPT (2023); with Aldo Lee, Une lente introduction (2007) and étrangler le temps (2020). These films have been the subject of an exhibition at Frac Sud – Cité de l’art contemporain in Marseille in 2023.