During the Concours Weekend, workshops are offered by established and prominent choreographers in the dance world for Neoclassical, Modern, Contemporary and Jazz.
We're proud to announce that our workshops will take place in Concert Hall Bruges (Concertgebouw Brugge), in walking distance of the Royal City Theatre.
We provide two workshops of 1 hour each:
Modern Workshop with Nicola Wills on Saturday, 28 February 2026 (morning)
Contemporary Workshop with Femke Gyselinck on Sunday, 1 March 2026 (morning)
The workshops will take place in the large ballet studio of the Concertgebouw. Please note: these workshops are only for dancers participating in the competition and from birth year 2016.
Your individual competition schedule will be taken into account if you participate in the workshops, so we will manage that you can always combine the workshops with your competition scheme!
Nicola Wills (AU)
Nicola Wills grew up in Adelaide, Australia, where she received her dance training at Terry Simpson’s Dance Studio. In 2013, she began her professional dance career at Opera Ballet Vlaanderen in Belgium, working within a highly diverse repertoire that included classical, neoclassical, and contemporary works by choreographers such as William Forsythe, Pina Bausch, Akram Khan, Jiří Kylián, Ohad Naharin, and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.
Since 2014, Nicola has also been active as a choreographer. She created several works within the internal choreography program of Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, including the in-house project “Choreolab.” She is also active in the film and dance-film world, with projects such as The Vital Escape Up (2019), Familiar (2021), and Imbolic (2023). Her choreographic work is characterised by a blend of classical lines and contemporary movement methodologies, often infused with a strong emotional and psychological undertone. In 2025, multiple projects are planned: she will create work for the Origen Festival in Switzerland, the National Ballet of Albania, the Royal Ballet School Antwerp, and the Conservatoire of Professional Dance in Madrid. Additionally, she will work as a choreographic assistant and perform in two separate projects with Akram Khan.
The recognition she receives through choreography competitions and fellowship programs shows that her work is appreciated internationally. Thanks to her background in psychology and her interest in the social-emotional dimension of dance, Nicola brings an additional depth to her choreography, making her work particularly relevant in discussions surrounding identity, the body, movement, and society.
Femke Gyselinck (BE)
Femke Gyselinck is a Brussels-based dancer and choreographer. After graduating from P.A.R.T.S. in 2006, she worked as a freelance dancer with, among others, Eleanor Bauer, Andros Zins-Browne, and Esther Venrooy. She was part of Deborah Hay’s Solo Commissioning Project. From 2010 to 2018 she served as the artistic assistant to Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker/Rosas, after which she began developing her own choreographic career.
Since 2023 Gyselinck has been one of the four artistic directors of GRIP alongside Jan Martens, Cherish Menzo, and Steven Michel.
Her work interweaves dance and music, seeking a subtle balance of lightness and expressiveness in movement. She collaborates across a range of musical genres, from electronic music (Anushka Chkheidze) to baroque (B’Rock Orchestra, Romina Lischka & Hathor Consort) and jazz (Lander Gyselinck, Hendrik Lasure, Adia Vanheerentals). She has worked with Platform K, a company for dancers with disabilities, and with Opera Ballet Vlaanderen (OBV), where she assisted visual artist Julian Rosefeldt in his staging of Faust.
