Alain Platel

Alain Platel (°1956) is trained as a remedial educationalist, and is an autodidact director. In 1984 he set up a small group with a number of friends and relatives to work collectively. Emma (1988) signalled his concentration on directing. He was responsible for Bonjour Madame (1993), La Tristeza Complice (1995) and Iets op Bach (1998), with which les ballets C de la B (as the group was then called) rocketed to the international top. In the meantime his collaboration with Arne Sierens had a similar effect on the Ghent youth theatre company Victoria, with the three plays Moeder en Kind (1995), Bernadetje (1996) and Allemaal Indiaan (1999).

After Allemaal Indiaan he announced that he was stopping making productions. But shortly afterwards Gerard Mortier persuaded him to do Wolf (2003) based on Mozart for the Ruhrtriennale. Subsequently a choir project for the opening of the new KVS in Brussels marked the start of close collaboration with the composer Fabrizio Cassol. vsprs (2006) proved to be a turning point in his career. So far his work had been exuberant in both the diversity of performers and the themes, but now it became more profound and intense and revealed a world of passion and desire. And violence, as in Nine Finger (2007) with Benjamin Verdonck and Fumiyo Ikeda.

After the baroque pitié! (2008), Out Of Context – for Pina (2010) is an almost ascetic reflection of the movement repertoire of spasms and tics. Platel consistently continues to search this language of movement for incarnations of feelings that are too vast. The yearning for something transcending the individual is becoming more and more palpable. The production has become an iconic show that has been reprised every year somewhere in the world ever since, still performed exclusively by the original dancers.


Gardenia (2010) was created in collaboration with director Frank Van Laecke, who in turn introduced composer Steven Prengels, whose work will continue to feature in Platel’s oeuvre.
The closing of a drag cabaret served as a pretext to peek into the private lives of a memorable group of aging performers. The collaboration between Platel, Van Laecke, and Prengels continued: En avant, marche! (2015) reflected a society inspired by the tradition of fanfare orchestras and brass bands, while in Mein Gent (2025), a hundred-strong choir of Ghent residents presents a musical and theatrical tribute to the city.

In 2012 Gerard Mortier convinced Platel once more to work with the opera’s from Verdi and Wagner: C(H)ŒURS became so far Platel’s biggest project. Together with his dancers, the choir of Madrid’s Teatro Real opera house and composer Prengels, he examined how ‘dangerously beautiful’ a group can be. With Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Platel recreated this performance in 2022. With a premiere just after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, reality shimmered again in the performance. A revival is planned for 2028 at the Opéra du Rhin.
The political connotation in performances such as tauberbach (in collaboration with Steven Prengels, 2014) and Coup Fatal (in collaboration with Fabrizio Cassol, 2014) lied in the joie de vivre and energy that was displayed on stage to show how people sometimes live or even survive in undignified circumstances. “Lust for life” as a way of rebellion. It’s this lust for life that pushed the dancers in searching the possibility for transformation in nicht schlafen (in collaboration with Steven Prengels, 2016), a performance on music by Mahler, that carries the restlessness and sense of foreboding doom of an accelerating society, staged in a set designed by visual artist Berlinde De Bruyckere.

The theme of death had always featured significantly in Platel’s work, but never before it had been so central as in Requiem pour L. (in collaboration with Fabrizio Cassol, 2018). By writing a book of the same name, Platel digested the heavy process of this Requiem’s creation.

Meanwhile, Platel was also focusing on the development of connexions in his hometown, Ghent. Together with Lisi Estaras and Quan Bui Ngoc, he united 300 citizens of all ages and backgrounds in an unprecedented open-air performance of Le Sacre du Printemps (2018) on The Kouter (a square in the center of Ghent).

After more than 35 years, the curtain fell on les ballets C de la B, after which Platel mobilized the entire house of Opera Ballet Vlaanderen for Ombra (in collaboration with Steven Prengels and Berlinde De Bruyckere, 2024): from choir and orchestra to dancers and the set and costume ateliers, everyone works together on a performance that celebrates life and bids farewell beneath the slow fall of a gigantic tree.

But let it be clear, Platel is not just into large scale projects. In the past, he worked on small projects such as Nachtschade (for Victoria in 2006), coaching work for amongst others Pieter and Jakob Ampe and their production Jake & Pete’s big reconciliation attempt for the disputes form the past (in 2011), Ghost by Luis Marrafa (2021), as well as the years as a guest lecturer at the drama department of KASK School of Arts, or the creation of Another Sacre (2021) together with Bérengère Bodin and the final year students of the Antwerp Conservatory. These projects have had a significant influence on his way of perceiving theatre.
He reflects on this in Een tachtiger die zeventig wordt, a contemplative book in which Alain Platel revisits his own career and traces the evolution of the performing arts over recent decades. The book is set to be published in April 2026.

He also almost surreptitiously entered the arena of the dance film together with the British director Sophie Fiennes (Because I Sing in 2001, Ramallah!Ramallah!Ramallah! in 2005 and VSPRS Show and Tell in 2007) and with photographer Mirjam Devriendt (Why we fight? in 2021) or solo with de balletten en ci en là (2006), an impressive view of what goes on in a twenty-year-old dance company, taking us all the way to Vietnam and Burkina Faso, but also and mainly being an ode to his hometown Ghent.

Alain Platel is currently working on Soûl with dancers from Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, a short performance that will be staged in 2027 as part of a double bill alongside a revival of Adagio (Pina Bausch).

Alain Platel’s work has received numerous awards both at home and abroad.

update: 04/2026