Emilie Camacho
Emilie has been a choreographer and dancer for over 25 years. Trained at the Jeune Ballet de Paris, she left ballet to explore contemporary dance after finding it impossible to have her person of colour accepted within the conservative culture of French classical ballet. Whilst studying philosophy, she discovered and delved deeper into Steve Paxton’s contact improvisation. She began her professional career at the CCN in Grenoble under Jean-Claude Gallotta, then moved to Switzerland (Cie Linga/Jean-Marc Heim), where she spent five years exploring the world of Swiss alternative dance, notably through her close ties with students at ECAL (the Lausanne Cantonal School of Art). In 2005, alongside a photographer and a researcher in semiotics from the University of Geneva, she founded the RABBIT RESEARCH collective. Together, they experiment with new creative processes for institutions, the theatre, museums and the audiovisual sector.
This is the process that Emilie is determined to set in motion.
Since 2009, she has been working alongside Stefanie Batten Bland, an American pioneer of immersive theatre who hails from England and is supported by Baryshnikov, Emilie has been travelling between Europe and the USA to create and perform “a transatlantic spirit”, whilst also working with French directors (Blanca LI, Stéphane Braunschweig, Philippe Jamet, Alexandre Blondel). She is the author of “Je m’appelle Europe” for the European Parliament, ‘Je m’appelle dieu’ for Dantzaz (Spain), ‘Holly Water’ and ‘Corps Politique’ for Live Magazine, and has produced numerous projects in secondary schools using the ‘Collège en Chantier’ approach, which she set up at the request of the Grenoble Academy. Having recently settled in the Basque Country with the Projet Ra.Re company, Emilie was awarded the Best Performance prize for her solo piece “Erreur de parcours” at the Le Temps d’aimer festival in Biarritz; she received the ATALAK 2024 cross-border research grant for “Retour à Itak”, followed by the Pyrenart 2026 grant for the work-in-progress “Ô.UII, la somme de tous nos désirs”. In collaboration with Naïf Production, she restaged “Je suis fait du bruit des autres” with aspiring farmers and worked on the dramaturgy of “Une Pédagogie du Conflit”. Together, they decided to explore new avenues for responsible, sustainable and ethical artistic engagement.
If the world of circus now appeals to her and fascinates her, it is because she finds in it the authenticity of contact dance, and the opportunity to rethink the challenges of choreographic creation freely.