Julie Beauvais is an opera director, transdisciplinary artist and educator based in the mountains of southern Switzerland and northern India. Through her works, she explores the fundamental tenets of opera in its diverse expressions around the world: Embodiment of cosmoperceptions, Vibrations travelling through vastness, and Ever-changing field of entanglements. Her creations have been presented and exhibited internationally since 2001.    

 

After graduating from Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris in 2000, Beauvais co-founds several companies in the United States, in Switzerland and in Denmark. For seven years, she explores forms of epic theatre in diverse political contexts. The work leads to long term collaborations with Brazilian, Mongolian, and Nicaraguan companies. 

 

In 2006, she begins staging operas and soon focuses on the contemporary and non-Western repertoire. In 2013, she creates a platform for her experiments by founding Windhorse, a multicultural operatic laboratory to deepen the art of listening. Together with her collaborators, Beauvais explores new perspectives on trans-territorial cooperation for sustainable development in the context of emerging challenges and shifting paradigms.  

 

Invited to share her research and passionate about the continuity of practices and the mutation of processes, she regularly collaborates with educational institutions including ZHdK–Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, Hochschule für Musik FHNW in Basel, Hochschule Luzern–Musik, EPFL–Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, HEMU–Haute Ecole de Musique, Arthaus.Berlin International Training and Research Center, Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore, and more. Julie also leads workshops and masterclasses internationally.

 

Since 2018, she directs The Witness, translocal opera weaving together the Earth's changing messages and the voices of indigenous wisdom holders. From 2020 to 2022, she founds and co-directs Sonic Matter–Experimental Music Platform based in Zurich. In 2021, she initiates ALTER- Altitude Laboratory I Transition Experiments I Research, a high-altitude residency program nurturing collaboration among artists, researchers and local inhabitants that responds to environmental crises in high-mountain communities.

 

Recently, Beauvais directed ORLANDO, a new paradigm opera co-produced by La Bâtie–Festival de Genève, performed among others at the FIBA–Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires, the Festival de Santiago a Mil, the Mostra Internacional de Teatro de São Paulo, the O. Festival in Rotterdam, the Manifesta13 European biennial in Marseille, and throughout India.

 

Julie's current collaborative field research focus on Himalayan operas and their potential to create new narratives that reflect both local heritage and global paradigm shifts.

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*An edge walker is defined as someone who lives or works at the intersection of different disciplines, cultures, or worldviews, bridging these areas and fostering understanding between them. They are individuals who are comfortable operating in ambiguous spaces, often seen as explorers who facilitate change and connection between different perspectives.

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