Lionel Hoche

Lionel Hoche was born in 1964 in Paris.

He began studying dance in 1978 at the Paris Opera Ballet School. In 1983-89, he joined the Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) where he danced under the direction of Jiří Kylián.

In 1988, he created his first choreography for NDT 2, U Should Have Left the Light On. This piece was later staged also by the Companhia de Dança de Lisboa, Compagnie Nomades le Loft Vevey, and the Balleto del’Opera di Roma. Throughout his six years in the company, Hoche danced and collaborated with other choreographers such as William Forsythe, Jerome Robbins, José Limón, and Ohad Naharin.
In 1989-91, Hoche joined Astrakan, Daniel Larrieu’s company, and in 1992 he became his assistant at the Paris Opera Ballet. That same year he founded his own company and was commissioned by the International Canned Dance Festival to perform his first choreography for it, Prière de tenir la main courante (Please Hold the Handrail). From 1998-2002, Hoche’s company was the resident dance company at the Esplanade Opera Theatre in Saint-Etienne. Since 2005, it has been collaborating in residency at the Maison de la musique in Nanterre (Paris).

Since 1990, Hoche has been working as a freelance choreographer. He had created over eighty new commissioned works for more than thirty of Europe and Asia’s most prestigious ballet companies, such as the Ballets de Monte-Carlo, the Zurich Ballet, the National Ballet of Finland, the Ballet Philippines, and Batsheva. Batsheva danced his choreography Blancs D’y Voir (1992).

In 2002, Lionel Hoche received the distinction of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Minister of Culture.