Jean-Philippe Van Aelbrouck

Former director of the Performing and Visual Arts in the Ministry of Culture in Brussels (Wallonie-Brussels Federation), I started dance research in the mid 1980, responding to a challenge that a Belgian choreographer had given me, saying «Before Béjart, dance history didn’t exist in Belgium!» I quickly discovered that there was a lot of informations about dance sleeping in the archives. I first published some dance books and treatises facsimiles on 18th Century «contredanse» (country dance and quadrille) in the Austrian Netherlands. Along with many articles on theatre and dance, I also published in 1994 a dictionary of dancers in Brussels from 1600 to 1830, in which I devoted 7 pages to the Petipa family. I am preparing two books, one on traveling actors and dancers in Brussels in the 18th Century, the other on the Hus family, a dynasty of dancers and actors from the 17th to the 19th Century.