©David Krooshof
Biography
Astrid Boons (1988, Belgium) is a choreographer, performer, and artistic leader with an international career across creation, performance, and mentorship. She is the founder and artistic director of Khôra / Astrid Boons, a foundation and platform for interdisciplinary creation and international collaboration, where she leads projects that unite choreographic research, artistic collaboration, and production strategy.
Known in the European dance scene for her emotionally demanding pieces and her strongly embodied states, Boons’ creations offer a space to deeply experience the body as the site of boundaries and expansion between us and the world. She creates work with a distinctive female perspective foregrounding the subjective connectivity as a form of resistance, together with the continuous search for personal agency.
Her work has been produced by Korzo Theatre, Nederlands Dans Theater, Dance Theater Heidelberg, GöteborgsOperans Danskompani, Conny Janssen Danst, among others. Astrid received the BNG Bank Dance Award 2017 and Piket Art Award 2017 for her duet Rhizoma (2016). In 2020 she was named artist to watch by NRC newspaper. In 2021, she was nominated for the prestigious Prize of The Netherlands Dance Days for choreography. In 2022 she received the Fast Forward subsidy to expand her work and international relations. Her partners for this trajectory were: Opera Ballet Flanders, Hessische Staatsballett/Tanzplatform Rhein Main, La Briqueterie, The Norwegian Ballet and Alvin Ailey 2.
As a dancer Astrid worked with Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch (2017-2018), Nederlands Dans Theater 1 (2017), GöteborgsOperans Danskompani(2013-2016), Nederlands Dans Theater 2 (2009-2013), Dansgroep Amsterdam(2009) and Dansgroep Krisztina De Châtel (2008).
Alongside her work as a choreographer, Astrid has developed a distinctive movement practice derived from her choreographic research. She has taught this practice in international companies and schools such as Nederlands Dans Theater, Dance Theater Heidelberg, Opera Ballet Flanders, Hessisches Staatsballett, The Norwegian Ballet, NOD, Codarts, ArtEZ, AHK, and the Royal Conservatory Antwerp, among others.
Astrid graduated from The Royal Ballet School of Antwerp (BE). She holds a BA Dance from Codarts (NL) and a BA of Arts (Honours) in Humanities (Art History and Philosophy) from the Open University (UK). Since 2021, she is also a certified Vinyasa Yoga teacher.