Julie Beauvais
Transdisciplinary artist, Director, Educator
Julie Beauvais is a transdisciplinary artist, director, and educator based in Switzerland. Her body of work ranges from opera, theatre and choreographic works, to performative installations and transterritorial cooperation programs. Her art is driven by her interests in embodied experience and expanded consciousness and has been performed and exhibited internationally since 2001.
In 2018, she launches The Witness, a platform that brings together transdisciplinary groups of artists, scientists, and activists from different parts of the world to collaborate with their local communities and listen to our endangered planet. From 2020 to 2022, she founds and co-directs Sonic Matter - Experimental Music Platform based in Zurich. In 2021, she initiates ALTER- Altitude Laboratory I Transition Experiments I Research, a collaboration among artists, researchers and local inhabitants that responds to environmental crises in high-mountain communities.
After graduating from Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris in 2000, Beauvais co-founds several companies in the United States, in Switzerland and in Denmark. For seven years, she researches internationally, exploring forms of epic theatre in diverse political contexts. The work leads to long term collaborations with Brazilian, Mongolian and Nicaraguan companies.
In 2006, she begins to stage operas and soon focuses on contemporary repertoire and experimental forms. She creates a platform for her research by founding BadNewsFromTheStars*, a transdisciplinary laboratory of innovative convergences to explore and deepen the art of listening. With her collaborators, Beauvais explores new perspectives on international cooperation for sustainable development in the context of emerging challenges and shifting paradigms. The approach to "multi-species becoming with" combines deep listening practices, conscious movement and community based work.
Invited to share her research and passionate about transmission, she consistently collaborates with educational institutions, including ZHdK-Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, Hochschule für Musik FHNW in Basel, Hochschule Luzern-Musik, EPFL-Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, HEMU-Haute Ecole de Musique, International Theatre School of the Russian Federation in Moscow, Arthaus.Berlin International Training and Research Center, Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore.
Recently, Beauvais choreographed and directed, with artist Horace Lundd, ORLANDO, New Paradigm Opera coproduced by La Bâtie-Festival de Genève, performed in, among other, Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires, Santiago a Mil Festival, Mostra Internacional de Teatro de São Paulo, the European biennial Manifesta13 in Marseille, and across India. She currently focuses on supporting the international platforms and programs she has established while developing educational projects in collaboration with several art and research universities in Switzerland and around the world.
