Pieter Ampe - YOUR/MY BODY

YOUR/MY BODY focuses on the body as a vehicle for empathy.

At a time when our lives are becoming increasingly digital, the gap between us and our own physical experiences is growing.

YOUR/MY BODY offers a counter-movement: a return to the feeling, tangible, breathing body. Not anti-technological, but a necessary counterpart that activates closeness, empathy and humanity.

YOUR/MY BODY explores how the body can generate empathy: through breath, gaze, skin and voice, physical signals are shared and collective resonance is generated.

Human-like.
In this residency, I want to play with basic physical elements.
Fall back on skin, breath, sweat, blood and tears.
I want to explore what it means to be human in these elements, to discover how much emotion and expressiveness is contained in my foundation.

Pieter Ampe is a dancer, choreographer and performer, known for his playful work on personal relationships. After studying at P.A.R.T.S. (2004-2008), he collaborated with Gui Garrido on Still Difficult Duet and joined ROSAS in The Song. As artist-in-residence at CAMPO in Ghent, he created several internationally touring performances, including Still Standing You (2010), Jake & Pete’s big reconciliation attempt… (2011), So You Can Feel (2014) and We Don't Speak To Be Understood (2015).

In 2016, he worked as a choreographer on It's In The Small Things (KVS) and later collaborated with Carte Blanche (2018) and the Icelandic Dance Company (2019).

He danced in Meg Stuart's Cascade and performed in Lisaboa Houbrechts' Vakepoes.

As part of the Sweet & Tender Collaborations collective, he created Attempts of Togetherness at the Kampnagel theatre in Hamburg (2025).

In 2022-23, Pieter received a grant from the Flemish Community to research breathing as a source of movement and silence in performance. This resulted in the research project Aria / Silent Opera with Michael Schmid, which led to workshops at Impulstanz Vienna and P.A.R.T.S. and performances at Rubirock, kc Nona, Plat(e)form(e) and Dansand!

YOUR/MY BODY is a new stage for Pieter, where he integrates his work with breathing into a practice that makes his accumulated knowledge available for creating transdisciplinary performances with dancers, performers, musicians, costume and set designers and filmmakers. We are working towards residencies at Kanal Pompidou and a premiere during December Dance 2026 (subject to change).