Allison Faye

I am a dancer, choreographer, illustrator, and author. I live and work in Brussels.
I first studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, then enrolled in the master’s program in visual and graphic communication at La Cambre, where I developed my work in illustration and writing around the concept of home as an ambiguous space that is both familiar and strange.
I published *Home Sweet Home*, a graphic novel that tells the story of a narrator who struggles to leave their home, no matter how hostile it may be. I earned my degree and participated in an exchange program with the Turku School of Art and Applied Sciences in Finland. Upon returning to Brussels, I decided to place the body at the center of my artistic process—both through poetic and drawn forms and by training in dance at the International Academy of Dance.
I grew up in a priority education zone immersed in a hip-hop culture that champions autonomy and self-learning, as well as a love of rhythm, music, groove, and flow. Naturally, when I began dancing, I gravitated toward freestyle—exploring movement and individuality on my own.
But I also specialized in art history starting in high school, which allowed me to develop a contemporary artistic sensibility.
Drawing on this dual world, I am just as inspired and influenced by Louise Bourgeois, Sophie Calle, Pina Bausch, Crystal Pite, and Georgia O’Keeffe as I am by more popular references from cinema, burlesque, and hip hop culture.
So when I decided to dance, I was largely self-taught, training in the style of hip-hop circles while maintaining my personal approach to improvisational composition and even somatic exploration; I took numerous contemporary dance workshops —Peeping Tom, Ultima Vez, Nina Dipla, Gaga, Martha Moore, Anja Rotterkamp (…), among others—and I participated in the dance and choreographic practice program organized by Charleroi Danse, where I had the opportunity to meet and work with Boris Charmatz, Robyn Orlin, Benoit Lachambre, Marco Berettinni, and Olga de Soto. For me, the body becomes a source of poetic stories and storytelling, and a fascinating tool for exploration.
It was by directing my reflections on the question of home and inhabiting toward my own body—which is my primary dwelling, my most intimate home—that I began my dance practice and my exploration of movement.
At first, the same questions cross my mind: How is the way we inhabit a space connected to our history, our memory, our sensibilities, and our identity? So, how and why do we inhabit places—and also, how and why do we leave them? When I bring this back to my own body, it quickly propels me into a sort of spring cleaning: I realize that I am, in a certain way, shaped by my upbringing and culture, and sometimes that makes absolutely no sense in relation to who I am and limits me. What do I keep and what do I let go of—of myself, my beliefs, my behaviors? How do I let go of myself?