Steven Cohen

Steven Cohen was born in 1962 in South Africa, and now lives in France. Performer, choreographer and visual artist, he has orchestrated interventions in public places, in art galleries or on stages, notably at the Festival d’Automne, the Center Pompidou in Paris, the ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival, the National Arts Festival in Makhanda, the Théâtre du Rond-Point in Paris, the Montpellier Danse festival, the Festival d’Avignon, the Munich Opera Festival at the Bavarian State Opera, the Escena Contemporánea Festival in Madrid, the Bozar in Brussels, the Oktoberdans festival in Bergen, and the Canadian Stage in Toronto. He has participated in residencies at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, and the Center for Performance Research in New York. His visual artwork has been regularly exhibited internationally since the 1980s. He also runs workshops around the world that question the body as a scenographic object. His work brings to light what lies on the margins of society, beginning with his own identity as a gay, Jewish, white, South African man.

“If we consider our physical selves as a mobile stage, a place on which to produce actions, build things to be and learn to let things happen through movement, and allow others to look at us, then we can become a frame in which the spectator arranges things. I have always developed a new vocabulary of movement by redefining the familiar by placing constraints on the body – strange shoes, heavy costumes – or by impeding the senses. I am often accused of provocation, but it is never my intention. I like to conquer, invoke, and evoke.”
Steven Cohen with Samuel Mateu