Creative
Antonin Rioche
Born in Angers, France, Antonin Rioche grew up watching dance. His mum had a true passion for dance and took him to see shows from a very early age. He always knew he wanted to be a choreographer but instinctively felt he first needed to become a good dancer. After high school, despite never having done ballet and only trained as a contemporary mover, he integrated the Ballet Junior of Geneva. There he had three years of rigorous training, mainly geared to become a company dancer. Antonin never fully fitted into an exclusively physical work with little room for intellectual research. This made him seek for different paths once out in the professional field. He navigated the freelance dance field with curiosity, always making sure to challenge himself by diversifying as much as possible the movement vocabularies with which he worked. His first contract was with Olivier Dubois. He was part of diverse projects throughout Europe, namely, he worked with Sasha Waltz & Guests, Ryan Djojokarso, Theo Clinkard, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Cherkaoui stimulated him to create his first solo Oh boy!. Despite always feeling a little too young for it, Antonin slowly but surely started to build himself up as a choreographer.
He feels that a part of himself was dreaming of becoming a neo-classical dancer and that he perhaps uses this longing to dream big. If he cannot have that side of dance, he will have the other: creating for virtuosic dancers and big stages. Fully embracing the intricacies of freelancing life as our contemporary condition, he creates through different lenses of expression. Movement is a root of creation but not automatically the starting point. His works often depart from a text that he writes. From there, poetic interpretations emerge. Cataloging his ideas and inspirations, he creates in dialogue with his inner world.
Time passing is a recurrent theme in his pieces. He sees beauty as a true source of interest: if you put enough time and contemplation, everything becomes beautiful. It's all in the details.
His endeavors lie somewhere between the worlds of virtuosity and experimentation.
Antonin has always been a creator and a storyteller, dance happens to be one of his predominant mediums. He is also passionate about painting, photographing, and filming.
As a house choreographer at Korzo, he created The Others and Finally a sign of life both for Here we live and now, editions 2018 and 2019. Invited by Korzo and Nederlands Dans Theater he will be presenting his first full-evening performance: Glitter. It will premiere at the CaDance festival 2021 followed by a Dutch tour.
Asides from stage works, Antonin works hand in hand with film. His first solo in 2017, Oh boy!, created during the Eastman Summer Intensive (which toured in Europe as a piece first) became a film, and was selected and awarded by several film festivals around the world.
His duet Finally a sign of life is also now produced as a film, shot in Museum Voorlinden.