Ugo Dehaes

Ugo Dehaes

Ugo Dehaes [°1977, Leuven] star­ted to dan­ce at the age of 18. During a year he took bal­let clas­ses, fol­lo­wed con­tem­po­ra­ry dan­ce with tea­chers like David Hernandez, Benoît Lachambre and Saburro Teshigawara and atten­ded a half-time the­a­ter edu­ca­ti­on at De Kleine Academie. The fol­lo­wing year he star­ted his full-time dan­ce edu­ca­ti­on at P.A.R.T.S., the inter­na­ti­o­nal school for dan­cers and cho­re­o­grap­hers direc­ted by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker.

In 1998 Ugo star­ted to work as a dan­cer for Meg Stuart/​Damaged Goods. During three years he col­la­bo­ra­ted on the pie­ces appe­ti­te and Highway 101.
In 2000 he foun­ded the com­pa­ny kwaad bloed [www​.kwaad​bloed​.com] together Charlotte Vanden Eynde. Their first pie­ce, lijfs­tof, pre­mie­red at Kaaitheater befo­re star­ting an inter­na­ti­o­nal tour to Vienna, Salzburg, Berlin, Paris, etc.

From that moment onwards Ugo cre­a­ted regu­lar­ly new cho­re­o­grap­hies.
A first pha­se was inspi­red by the visu­al and mecha­ni­cal aspects of the human body. He inves­ti­ga­tes the body as an object, how it grows older and how it can be trans­for­med.
The second pha­se con­sisted of very phy­si­cal work. He inves­ti­ga­tes what hap­pens when two bodies occu­py the same spa­ce, or how bodies can invo­ke emo­ti­ons wit­hout the help of music or visu­al aids. This pha­se con­clu­ded with urban dan­ce morp­hing into con­tem­po­ra­ry dan­ce in a pie­ce with young­sters and 6 auto­no­mous dro­nes.
Parallel a third pha­se arou­sed in which sci­en­ce takes an impor­tant role: from very visu­al cho­re­o­grap­hies inspi­red by the uni­ver­sal for­ces that keep our world together, to an inves­ti­ga­ti­on into the mind of per­sons living with demen­tia.

Since 2018 Ugo shif­ted his focus and beca­me a cho­re­o­grap­her of things. Ugo made the moving sculp­tu­re Stalactiet (2018) for Tweetakt Festival (NL), Forced Labor: Arena (2020), an instal­la­ti­on with 8 inter­ac­ti­ve robots, Forced Labor (2021), a lec­tu­re-per­for­man­ce with small robots, Runner (2020), a self-learning robot, Pickled Punks (2021), a series of robots in jars of for­mal­de­hy­de, com­mis­si­o­ned by KIKK, and star­ted the research for LIMP, a col­la­bo­ra­ti­on with Prof. Geraint A. Wiggins (Computational Creativity) and Axiles Bionics (AI robo­ti­zed foot-pro­the­ses).

Next to his cho­re­o­grap­hic work, Ugo also made Coupure, a per­ma­nent, moving sculp­tu­re for the city of Bruges.

As a mem­ber of the Flemish Young Academy (www​.jon​ge​aca​de​mie​.be) Ugo has a direct con­tact with numerous impor­tant young sci­en­tists and researchers in Belgium.

In the mean­w­hi­le Ugo gave numerous work­shops and mas­ter­clas­ses and wor­ked for other artists amongst which Stijn Grupping (Post Uit Hesdalen), Ehsan Hemat, Samah Hijawi, Stéphane Arcas, Sachiyo Takahashi, Emil Hrvatin, Arco Renz, Gisèle Vienne & Etienne Bideau-Rey, Kataline Patkaï, Nada Gambier, Antonin De Bemels, Heine R. Avdal,…