Biography

Marie-Caroline Hominal lives and works in Geneva. She received her dance education at the ZHDK TanzAkademie in Zurich and at the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance in London, where she joined the National Youth Dance Company.
Thereafter, she worked among others with TanzTheater Basel, Gisèle Vienne, Gilles Jobin, La Ribot and Marco Berrettini (with whom she co-choreographed Ifeel2).
Her personal research begins in 2002 around video work, then shifts more decisively towards choreography from 2008 with the solo Fly Girl. In this solo, the dancer oscillates between representations of sexuality and violence in a game of provocations that undermines and multiplies identities.
Her artistic practice includes text, drawing, dance, video, sculptures, radio. Close to the field of performance, her works have been presented since 2008 in theaters, museums, art galleries as well as in more atypical places, such as a hotel bedroom, dressing room of theaters, semi-trailer truck, construction site, in all Europe, China, North and South America.
In 2017, she began research on the notion of authorship where the established collaboration protocol is the object of the work as much as the form; she invited the theater director and video artist Markus Öhrn for the first piece Hominal / Öhrn (2018), then the performing artist and choreographer Nelisiwe Xaba for Hominal / Xaba (2019), and the visual artist David Hominal for Hominal / Hominal (2023).
Sugar Dance, created in 2020, follows the choreographic pieces Ballet #1 (2014), Ballet #2 (2017), Ballet #3 (2019), Parad/isiaque (2019) and Le Cirque Astéroïde (2020), which explore behind the scene, the dynamics of entertainment and theatrical artifices.
In 2021 she created « Eurêka, c’est presque le titre » commissioned by the museum Tinguely and which has toured intensively in European museums.
Marie-Caroline Hominal is today one of the major figures of the contemporary choreographic scene in Switzerland.
In 2019 she was awarded “Outstanding Female Dancer” by the Swiss Dance Awards / Federal Cultural Office.
Furthermore, she is often invited to give workshops in art school (ECAL-Lausanne, HSLU-Luzern, Hochschule der Künste Bern, HEAD – Geneva). 

 

 

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Anne Davier
Head of ADC Theater — Geneva
« She has worked for artists like Gilles Jobin, Gisèle Vienne, La Ribot… Marie-Caroline Hominal has established herself as a major figure in the arts field through personal creations, performances and videos since 2006. Her multiple collaborations and a diverse range of formats (from a one-on-one performance in a box, to radio work, video and visual art, etc.) all contribute to the originality of her artistic vision.

I like her universe, a baroque world in which identities are blurred, where the tragic and the comic merge, sometimes darker, tending towards a sort of troublant ritual, sometimes eccentric, sometimes melancholic.

Above all, Marie-Caroline Hominal touches the soul of the theatre. Behind her mask, she is herself and nothing else. She offers the gift of her presence and affirms that the theatrical space is sacred, protected and haunted, that it is based on a symbolic exchange between the actor and the audience, a play that unites us in the present moment. »

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Marie-Caroline Hominal a travaillé avec des artistes comme Gilles Jobin, Gisèle Vienne, La Ribot… . Sa recherche personnelle, amorcée en 2002 autour d’un travail vidéo, s’oriente plus décisivement vers la chorégraphie à partir de 2008 avec la création de Fly Girl. Dans ce solo, la danseuse oscille entre représentations de la sexualité et de la violence dans un jeu de provocations qui mine et démultiplie les identités.

Volontiers kitsch, son univers se construit progressivement avec divers mediums : texte, musique, danse, vidéo, jeu avec des objets … Proches du champ de la performance, ses créations sont, depuis 2008, présentées aussi bien dans des théâtres que dans des lieux plus atypiques, comme une chambre d’hôtel ou une loge.

Marie-Caroline Hominal est aujourd’hui l’une des figures majeures de la scène chorégraphique contemporaine en Suisse. J’aime son univers et ses identités floues, tout comme j’aime me plonger dans le monde baroque qu’elle parvient à créer. Un monde souvent sombre, dans lequel le tragique et le comique se confondent. Le spectacle y est une sorte de rituel troublé, parfois excentrique, parfois mélancolique.

Derrière son masque, Marie-Caroline Hominal n’est rien d’autre qu’elle-même. En offrant le don de sa présence, elle affirme combien l’espace théâtral est sacré, protégé et hanté.

Alexandre Demidoff
Cultural journalist at Le Temps and Swiss Dance Award jury member
« Marie-Caroline Hominal is exceptional in many ways. Only when you’ve heard her caterwauling like one of the living dead, a mask of horror on her face, in ‘Hominal/Öhrn’, or admired her as she takes on voodoo spirits in ‘Froufrou’, can you appreciate the power of her interpretation, her gift for metamorphosis. For her, dance is a movement towards an elsewhere, a sometimes whole-body experience of otherness; she is guided solely by intellectual, ethnological and poetic curiosity. Hominal fuses impeccable technique with often astonishing inventiveness. She weaves spells that have a lasting impact, in Switzerland and abroad. »

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Hors du commun, Marie-Caroline Hominal l’est à plus d’un titre. Il faut l’avoir entendue feuler en morte-vivante, un masque d’épouvante sur le visage, dans « Hominal/Öhrn », ou l’avoir admirée commercer avec les esprits vaudous dans « Froufrou », pour saisir sa puissance d’interprétation, son don pour la métamorphose. La danse chez elle est mouvement vers l’ailleurs, expérience, à corps perdu parfois, de l’altérité : seules la guident ses curiosités intellectuelles, ethnologiques et poétiques. L’artiste allie une technique impeccable et une invention souvent stupéfi ante. Ses sortilèges marquent, en Suisse et à l’étranger.