Review: Thomas Fauc draft work studio performance - diamond rough to watch

I went to watch Thomas Fauc's presentation on 3rd November 2025 at HUIS Conny Janssen in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Thomas joined Conny Janssen Danst as an intern dancer last year. He continues to work as a dancer with the company and has recently taken up a position of Artist Residency also with the company as a choreographer, or a maker in Dutch.

This 21 year-old Frenchman quickly made an impression on me last year. As a new comer, he already partnered with Mariko Simoda, the company's most experienced dancer and the poster girl, in Normality No More, as well as Slipping Under in the Parade summer theatre festival (I missed this production. Apologies).

Over a course of an year, Thomas' body transformed from a student to a professional. I have seen this transformation happen to many good dancers.

So, I was intrigued when I received an email invitation to the event, which was billed as a presentation of a research project, for free-admission. I immediately said yes, I am coming!

The event took place in HUIS Conny Janssen's Studio 1 in a minimalist setting to rather a small group of audiences, a mix of his fellow dancers and members of general public like myself. It was his first ever choreography production to be performed in a public setting.

Post-show talk: from the left, Conny Janssen, Thomas, Mia and Filippo

At the event, Thomas explained that he created the work based on his imagery of fish and a fisherman. The fisherman wanted to grab the fish by hand but the fish was so slippery it kept falling off. This imagery was also interpreted into anyone's real life. A few days later, he told me he deliberately left the work title-less to give it and himself room for future development. (He provided me with a description about him and his work. It is reproduced lower in this article. Please scroll down. I wrote this review before reading it.)

What Thomas called a research project was a studio performance of a draft work of a pas de deux for about twenty minutes -- he did not use term pas de deux and the work was far from classical ballet. It featured dancers Mia Bourhis and Filippo Gualandris. Music was arranged by Lucas Cortes.

Dancers' roles were not described either but it was quite clear Mia was the fish and Filippo was the fisherman. Mia wore a minimum top and a minimum bottom blending with her skin tone and Filippo wore a cover-all.

Filippo walked in and found Mia on the floor. He touched her neck as if to check her pulse. He tried to support her to get up but she would slip down to the floor like a slime whatever he did.

The pas de deux became more dynamic and fluid, and there were also solo parts. The fish and the fisherman were panting heavily for air. Then Mia fell onto the floor one more time. Filippo touched her neck again and walked off, leaving her on stage.

I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the draft work. It was rather a mature artwork conglomerating many free radicals. For example, he presented his imagery in a purposefully unsophisticated yet elegant partnering work. It was free form but technically tricky and very controlled. It was abstract but had some story line. It was in Thomas' own style, but audiences could relate to it with their own personal life experiences.

Also, he understood the abilities of the individual artists and made best out of them, especially Mia. She is a very supple dancer with solid classical and contemporary techniques. But in some past productions, I had an impression that her physicality was not placed well.

In summary, it was totally my cup of tea. Thomas is a diamond rough to watch. Apparently, he also plays and composes music so he is multi-faceted. I look forward to seeing his next presentation and many more.

I watched the Dutch National Ballet's Romeo and Juliet in the day before and it was a small let-down. So Thomas' work felt like fresh air. When I spoke with him a few days later, he said he was willing to give it a title if he was given an opportunity to present it to wider audience. Hopefully, this will happen sooner than later.

Below is the presentation description written by Thomas himself. Text is unedited.

"Hi, I’m Thomas and I’m coming [sic] from France. I trained at the Ballet Junior de Genève before moving to Rotterdam to join Conny Janssen Danst. Over the past years, I’ve explored a broad range of materials and creative processes, which helped me become versatile, to keep reshaping my sense of authenticity, both in movement and in the way I perceive art. My interest lies in honesty, sensitivity, and vulnerability, in the quiet complexity of a human being in motion. As a maker, I try to carry this same essence: to share a vision, a picture of taste, color, texture.

"I had this image of a fisherman and a fish. I find interesting the difficulty of grasping a fish, always slipping away. It made me think of the French expression “glissé(e) entre mes mains”, meaning “slipped through my fingers.” There are things we long for but can never quite grasp, no matter how much effort we put in. It’s about searching for meaning even when there’s no clear point or ending, each attempt opening the door to a new story, one that drifts into the unexpected and remains forever unfinished."

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Image is taken by me with my iPhone.

Updated on 1st December 2025 to correct a verb tense.