Based in Brussels, Lodie Kardouss is an opera stage director and multidisciplinary artist whose practice moves freely across opera, performative staging, visual art, contemporary jewelry, installation, and critical writing, exploring the relationships between stage, image, and crafted forms.
In 2025, she directed Handel’s Messiah (Mozart version) at the Opéra de Limoges, signing the dramaturgy, stage direction, scenography, lighting, and costumes. The production was recorded and broadcast by France Télévisions. For the 2025/2026 season, she is an associate artist at the Opéra de Limoges – National Lyric Theatre.
Her work has been presented in France and internationally, notably at the Opéra de Rouen, the European Triennial of Contemporary Jewelry (Paris, Mons, Stockholm), Z33 Museum in Hasselt, MAD – Home of Creators in Brussels, Beijing Design Week, as well as in galleries in Strasbourg and Melbourne, and during Jewelry Weeks in Athens, Barcelona, Budapest, and Brussels.
She was initially trained as a performer at the Rencontres Internationales de Danse Contemporaine (Paris), the Junior Ballet d’Aquitaine (Bordeaux), and PARTS (Brussels), and also holds a diploma from RHOK Academy (Brussels), a formative context that informs her exploration of contemporary jewelry and her multidisciplinary approach to creation.
I explore how bodies, space, and materiality generate experience and meaning across opera, performative staging, visual art, contemporary jewelry, and installation.
I approach opera as a living performative system. Dramaturgy, scenography, lighting, costumes, and movement form an integrated and constantly evolving framework. This framework is often activated and transformed by the performers themselves.
Parallel practices in contemporary jewelry and installation allow tactile investigations of scale, care, and social value, which feed back into my stage work.
Critical writing on the work of other performing artists, including contributions to Pzazz, strengthens my artistic voice and guides both conceptual and formal decisions.
Across all media, I create experiences that engage audiences physically and intellectually, inviting reflection on the relationships between bodies, objects, and space.
My work is currently inspired by vocal forms not originally intended for the stage—such as oratorios, passions, requiems, traditional and ritual songs, medieval mysteries, and a cappella music from the Renaissance and early Baroque. I feel increasingly drawn to this territory. At the same time, contemporary music remains a constant source of inspiration, from structured compositional systems to timbre-focused, minimalist, and electroacoustic approaches.
These are works I wish to approach through staging and spatialization — giving them a visual framework, a context, and a physical presence. Not in order to turn them into opera, but to reveal their inherent dramatic force, their ritual dimension, and their collective resonance.
Thanks to my multidimensional practice, I enjoy considering lighting, costumes, and stage design simultaneously with the dramatic intent, allowing me to be both at the heart of the overall vision and attentive to every detail.
This is the direction in which I am developing my artistic research: conceiving the stage as a place of embodied listening, where the gaze extends the music, and where these vocal forms can find renewed relevance and immediacy today.
2025 Opéra de Limoges (FR) – Le Messie – Crafting the Concert
2022 Opéra de Rouen (FR) – L’Abrégé des Merveilles de Marco Polo
2014–2023 Rusalka – Opéra Grand Avignon (FR), Opéra National de Bordeaux (FR)
Il Trovatore – Opéra de Rouen Normandie (FR)
Death in Venice – Opéra National du Rhin (FR)
Trilogia Mozart Da Ponte (Le Nozze di Figaro, Così fan tutte, Don Giovanni) – La Monnaie (BE)
Serse – Staatstheater Nürnberg (DE), Opéra de Rouen Normandie (FR)
Salomé – Staatstheater Wiesbaden (DE)
Butterfly – Opéra de Limoges (FR), Opéra de Rouen Normandie (FR)
Les Contes d’Hoffmann – Theater Freiburg (DE)
La Cenerentola – Opéra de Toulon (FR), ABAO Bilbao Opera (ES)
Mitridate, Re di Ponto – La Monnaie (BE)
Clartés obscures – Opéra de Limoges (FR)
Harawi – Opéra Comique (FR), Festival Musica Strasbourg (FR), Opéra de Limoges (FR)
Peer Gynt – Opéra de Limoges (FR), Opéra National de Montpellier (FR), Théâtre Impérial de Compiène (FR)
Un événement culturel, Pourquoi faire ? – Bordeaux (FR)
Au pire, qu’est-ce qu’on risque ? – Bordeaux (FR)
2006–2015 Cie Willi Dorner; Jean Abreu Dance Company; Cie Les gens d’Uterpan;
Michèle Anne de Mey / Charleroi-danses; La Fura dels Baus;
Romeo Castellucci & Cindy Van Acker; La Monnaie; Mancopy Danskompagni;
Jens Bjerregaard; Tomomi Yamauchi; Tim Feldmann; Rachel Erdos;
Dominique Porte; Swee Boon Kuik; Le Lab; l’Orchestre des Champs Elysées
2022 Brussels Jewelry Week (BE) – Sleeping Beauty (+)
2019 Athens Jewelry Week (GR) – A Jewelry Piece
2018 Athens Jewelry Week (GR) – Curiosity — Joya Prize Winner
2024 Brussels Jewelry Week (BE) – Ring of Shelter (Abri de Fortune)
2022–2023 Creative Nature, Mons (BE) – A Jewelry Piece
2021 BeCraft Designers’ Showcase, Mons (BE) – Curiosity
2020 Beijing Design Week (CN) – A Jewelry Piece
2020 Athens Jewelry Week (GR) – Oxytocin (Red Is the Color of Love)
2020 Budapest Jewelry Week (HU) – Oxytocin (Red Is the Color of Love)
2020 Z33, Hasselt (BE) – Porte Z
2019 Institut Français de Barcelone / Joya Barcelona (ES) – A Jewelry Piece
2019 TempContemp Gallery, Melbourne (AU) – A Jewelry Piece
2019 Galerie Art’Course, Strasbourg (FR) – A Jewelry Piece
2018 Joya Barcelona (ES) – Curiosity
2018 BeCraft Designers’ Showcase, Mons (BE) – Memories of Urban Routes
2017–2018 European Triennial for Contemporary Jewelry (Mons, Stockholm, Paris) – Curiosity
2017 Museum Hof van Busleyden, Mechelen (BE) – Common Ground
2017 RHOK, Brussels (BE) – Curiosity
2016 RHOK, Brussels (BE) – Memories of Urban Routes
2015 Vander A Gallery, Brussels (BE) – Memories of Urban Routes
2019–2026 Performing Arts Reviewer – Pzazz (BE)
2017–2019 Artistic Coordinator – P.A.R.T.S. Summer School (BE) 2012 Artistic Coordinator – Museum Night Fever (BE)
2022 Rehearsal Director (touring) for Alexander Vantournhout (BE)
2012–2020 Dance and Performance Lecturer – La Monnaie (BE)
2006–2015 P.A.R.T.S.; Takween; Mancopy Dansekompagni; Le Menuet;
Balletomania; Bal Moderne; Studio Arabesque; La Joie par la Danse
2011–2017 RHOK Academy, Brussels (BE) — Graduate Diploma in Jewelry Design
2004–2006 Performing Arts Research and Training Studios (P.A.R.T.S.), Brussels (BE) — Graduate Diploma
2002–2004 Junior Ballet d’Aquitaine, Bordeaux (FR) — Modern Jazz Dance Diploma (Great Distinction)
2001–2002 Rencontres Internationales de Danse Contemporaine (R.I.D.C.), Paris (FR)
— Contemporary Dance Exam, credits in anatomy, dance history & music history
2000–2001 Centre Irène Popard, Paris (FR) — First-Year Certificate
1993–2004 Tap Dance, Paris (FR)
1999: Paris Region Competition, 3rd Prize
1998: National Competition, 2nd Prize
1998: Paris Region Competition, 1st Prize
National press Download International press & interviews Download