About

I am a multidisciplinary dance-theatre maker and performer, based in Brussels. I mostly make theatre shows, but also short films, movement direction, illusion and experimental public performances.

What fascinates me is human behaviour and movement, and the place where life, poetry and magic meet – taking the everyday things people do without thinking and turning them into something you can’t stop watching: extraordinary, funny or touching.

Illusion is a big part of the work: the way a body seems to transform or transcend its normal form, and the way our eyes can deceive us. Not to trick people, but to make them see more. At heart, the work is about human beings – our lives, thoughts, experiences and bodies – and the search for new ways to express them.

Teaching is a big part of the practice: dance-theatre classes and workshops internationally, for professional dancers, students and actors.

  • Jos Baker is a British-Belgian theatre maker, choreographer, dancer, director and teacher in Brussels. He performed for a decade with Peeping Tom, including the Olivier Award-winning 32 rue Vandenbranden, worked with DV8 Physical Theatre, Damien Jalet and Paul Thomas Anderson, and has acted for Felix van Groeningen. His choreography turns everyday gestures into precise dance theatre where humour, tragedy and illusion meet. Recent works include Apartment 24 (2026) and Strangers in the Night (2024). He directed the award-winning short film The Hole (2021), trained at Laban and PARTS, and teaches internationally.

  • Jos Baker is a Brussels-based theatre maker, choreographer, dancer, actor, director and teacher. His practice also extends into scriptwriting, film-making, movement direction and illusion design.

    For a decade he was a dancer, actor and collaborator with Peeping Tom, performing in 32 rue Vandenbranden from 2009 to 2019 and A Louer from 2011 to 2017; 32 rue Vandenbranden won the 2015 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production. He worked with DV8 Physical Theatre on the creation of John (2014), and was dancer and choreographic assistant to Damien Jalet on Anima (2019), the Netflix

    film by Paul Thomas Anderson starring Thom Yorke. He has also acted for director Felix van Groeningen.

    His choreographic work lives in the tension between the ordinary and the extraordinary. He takes the everyday gestures and actions we all use, often without realising it, and through precision, repetition and imagination turns them into choreography that is both recognisable and impossible to look away from. Humour and tragedy sit side by side, and illusion is used not to fool an audience but to expand what it perceives.

    His most recent work, Apartment 24 (2026), was created for Lenka Vagnerová & Company and premiered at the Komedie Theatre in Prague on 10 October 2026. It uses looping projection to build an ongoing sense of history, memory and time: the characters live their lives in parallel with projections of themselves from the past, often in perfect unison, but with deviations that let the audience see how their lives and relationships are changing. It is his second collaboration with composer Christos Parapagidis.

    Before that he wrote and co-created Strangers in the Night (2024) with Linus Jansner and Carlo Massari, a largely autobiographical, tragicomic piece of dance theatre based on his own experiences of struggling with truth and lies, in which he also performs.

    In 2021 he created Contactless with The Human Expression Company, Singapore, an exploration of how technology both brings us together and pulls us apart. Put Out the Flame, made with MW Dance Theatre, and The Smallest Little Thing became a double bill of his work commissioned by the Hong Kong Arts Festival in 2019.

    His solo works are Know It All (2019), Of No Fixed Abode (2017) and Creature Man Don’t Tell Me (2008). He also made We Were Youth (2017) with Tomislav English, Sam Coren and Tom Evans, Feedback (2009) with his father, Jeremy Spafford, and Afla (2008) with Artemis Stavridi.

    He has also created many works for junior companies and dance conservatoires, including Total Liquification (2026) for Freebodies; Ceci n’est pas une fin (2024) for CobosMika Junior Company; Jacky Chan (2023) and Sinking (2022) with PERA; and Variations on a Theme (2021) for CobosMika Junior Company. Earlier commissions include Timeline (2018, CobosMika Junior Company), Zungen (2018, Performact, Portugal), Understanding Sugar (2017, Ballet Junior de Genève), Tidal Breath and Let Us Not Ask Where It Leads (both 2016, SEAD, Salzburg) and What Do You Do? (2015, AHK, Amsterdam).

    As a movement director and illusion designer he is working on Elektra by Hazel Lam, and worked on Merveille (2023), written and directed by Jeanne Dandoy. He choreographed and performed in the opening of Cedric Charlier’s Petit Bateau collection at Paris Fashion Week (2014).

    On screen, he directed the short films The Hole (2021, with Julie de Clercq), which won Best Experimental Short at the Short Encounters International Film Festival and awards at Bucharest Shortcut Cinefest and V.i.Z. Film Fest (all 2021), and Shift (2021), as well as a screen adaptation of Put Out the Flame (2021). He choreographed the Saint Clair music video Violet Hour (2020, directed by Tamsin Topolski). Other screen work includes Let It Roll (2016), Koen Mortier’s video for Mustard Gas and Roses, and Forgot to Live (2013) for Ay Wing.

    He began dancing at seven with Oxford Youth Dance, then trained at Laban in London and PARTS in Brussels. For more than fifteen years he has taught classes and workshops worldwide, at schools including PARTS, SEAD, Codarts, Laban, Ballet Junior de Genève, the Koninklijk Conservatorium Antwerpen, La Faktoria, Northern School of Contemporary Dance, Deltebre Danza, Summer Intensive – Portugal and many more. He has also taught company class for Ultima Vez, Gothenburg Opera Dance Company, Ballet de Marseille and Staatstheater Kassel.