Emilie De Vlam

Emilie de Vlam (born 1969) is a performer, dancer and teacher based in Ghent. In her artistic teaching and dance practice, she works with great enthusiasm with people from all possible backgrounds, ages and walks of life.

She first obtained her bachelor's degree in Contemporary Ballet and Dance Theatre at the Higher Institute for Dance and Dance Pedagogy in Antwerp. But already at a young age, she also came into contact with Body Weather, which has since formed the absolute basis of her dance practice. For example, Emilie conducted research with the founder of Body Weather, Min Tanaka, and worked intensively with various dancers from the Body Weather Laboratory in Japan.

After completing her university studies in Comparative Cultural Studies at Ghent University and St Andrews (Scotland), she received various grants (Japan Foundation, Europalia Japan, Honda Foundation) to further her butoh research in Japan. Emilie trained with dancers like Akira Kasai and Tenshi Khan in Tokyo, and worked closely with Masaki Iwana, the luminary of the Butoh movement. Emilie also made important contributions to the 2002 publication “Images of corporeality: traces of Butoh in Flanders”.

Finally, in 2017, she relaunched DEVLOER, which to this day is a rapidly growing platform for movement, dance and performance, full of experiments, try-outs and workshops.