The body that is there wants to achieve a complete possession of itself.Paul Valéry
Isabelle Beernaert is a beautiful woman with a southern temperament. Her Belgian father fell under the spell of an Italian-French woman. The couple settled in Kortrijk. That is where her cradle stood.
With as antecedents a father who was a jazz musician and also ran a record shop, and a warm-blooded Italian-French mother, her artistic future was, so to speak, an inevitability. Our DNA is all the same, but the potential for talent is not. She studied classical ballet, modern jazz, show jazz, pas de deux, mime, tango and Spanish and Bulgarian dance at the Royal Ballet School of Antwerp. That formed the foundation and the transition, an opening to what she had not yet mastered. She went on to perfect herself with renowned mentors in urban dance styles such as hip-hop, breakdance and ethnic dance styles including African and Indian dances. An impressive accumulation of the most diverse dance forms. It is these extremes that create exceptional moments, regardless of the direction: classical or experimental. Dance remains the core. Only intrinsic quality matters. Mix this with her enthusiasm and you get pure passion. Contemporary dance is, in contrast to classical ballet, a constant questioning of how movement can be deployed as an art form and that on an axis from stillness to extreme virtuosity. As a creative all-rounder, her tireless energy cannot be confined to one box. Nowadays she is a choreographer for various production companies and events in the media, fashion and theater worlds..
In the picture
Isabelle Beernaert became known to the general public through the acclaimed choreographies she created for So You Think You Can Dance and her victory at The Ultimate Dance Battle. Inspired by the enormous potential of young emerging talent, she was motivated to create her own dance productions. After that first successful modern dance production 'Ne me quitte pas' followed 'Et après' and 'Laat me'…. Productions full of passionate pain, but also zest for life. Isabelle Beernaert is a persister. Will alone is not enough. Not everyone can call themselves a choreographer. It takes talent, a special gift. Of crucial importance for a choreographer is having a special sense for form-becoming. Her strength lies in bringing out the best in people. The least one can say of this dazzling and charismatic lady is that she has vision, inspiration and is a cultural entrepreneur. Thanks to her many artistic wanderings, the public came to know an artist with demanding and ambitious projects. Productions at the intersection of different disciplines. Her work breathes a unique modernity.
Authenticity
A great love of music is one thing. Isabelle Beernaert also sees music in relation to other art forms, but first and foremost as a physical journey through space with respect for the individual and respect for the viewer. Music and dance thrive in her choreographies in a sensitive and organic way. In her dance productions, she works with a collective of young dancers who all get a good part and who, under her inspiring influence, transcend themselves. Choreographies of a high artistic level with unprecedented physical power and expressivity that manage to convince and move. Partly confrontational, but also with an unexpected poetic richness. The imperfect and the vulnerable are a constant. Dance productions with body that creeps under your skin and appeals to different generations. For that broad reach, Isabelle Beernaert has no fixed recipe. She opts for music with depth, a pure display of emotions. Everything revolves around those emotions. You feel it, this is made by a woman who stands in life with all her fibers. It is simply the alertness of observation, of ego in the world. She also understands the art of maintaining the balance between male testosterone and female estrogen. She embraces the music, in which, just as in her dance vocabulary, there are few or no boundaries. With an aversion to kitsch, she knows how to choose the perfect songs, chansons and instrumental music. The fragments are connected into a coherent story. That combined with her imagination ensures a whole string of highlights. Condensation and intensity are a constant. Isabelle Beernaert creates the feeling of a slice of life by putting diverse music and dance styles into perspective and giving them a theatrical dimension.The role of a choreographer
Choreographers inspire, provoke and motivate to look at dance in relation to different subjects and themes, to think about them and to put them into practice. Dancing stimulates the use of different intelligences: verbal, physical, musical, spatial and interpersonal. She makes people happy with dance and music. I think it has to do with the readability and audience-friendliness of the productions. They are never flatly commercial and carry great recognizability. Her choreographies are flashy and physical, associative and fragmentary in structure. The irresistible expressive power of music is her alter ego. An artist moves us when he manages to nestle an image between images, a feeling between impressions.Thousands of people in the Netherlands and Flanders have already enjoyed her dance productions.
Soon there will be a few more performances of hers to see at various locations, first 'Naakt Nuda Veritas' on 17 October in Genk, 24 October in Antwerpen, 29 October in Gent and on 31 October in Oostende. Consult the agenda for the other dates. Her newest production 'Oxytocin' premieres on 24 November in the Elisabethzaal in Antwerpen.
