Denis Inghelbrecht

Street and club dance are the basis of my work, with Popping as my main practice and a strong focus on arm styles such as Waving, Tutting and Electro.

Storytelling is an important part of how I look at dance. I’m fascinated by how we can tell stories through body language, and how this differs from telling them through words or sentences. I’m interested in where meaning comes from: whether it is already present before the movement is created, whether it appears afterwards, or whether it grows from another layer such as music, location, costume or image. I like exploring how these different starting points can influence what we create, and how a story can eventually be communicated through the medium of dance.

"As humans, we naturally establish connections between what we see and what we have seen before. Our brains find pleasure in understanding the links between different entities, which is why we enjoy problem-solving. When I create, I approach it as a puzzle for the viewer to solve. This could involve recognizing a pattern or uncovering the reasoning behind an emotion or movement. By balancing between the predictable and the unpredictable, we can captivate the audience's attention."

I also have a background in software development, which probably explains part of my attraction to structures, systems and methods. I like thinking about how a creative process is built and how its different parts relate to each other. At the same time, I enjoy questioning those structures and sometimes deliberately letting go of control: introducing chance, limitations or unfamiliar ways of working that can take a process somewhere I would not have consciously chosen myself.