Dominique Mercy

Dominique Mercy was born in 1950 in Mauzac, France. He began dancing at the age of six in Talence under the instruction of Mme Dupradeau. In 1965, following three years of study with Germaine Lalande, he joined the ballet company of the Grand-Théâtre in Bordeaux, which was directed by Paul Grinwis and later by Adolfo Andrade. During this period, guest choreographer Françoise Adret entrusted him with his first solo roles.
In 1968, Mercy joined the newly established Ballet-Théâtre Contemporain in Amiens under the leadership of Jean-Albert Cartier and Françoise Adret, where he met Manuel Alum. Invited by Alum to perform with his company, Mercy participated in the Saratoga Summer Festival in 1972, where he met Pina Bausch for the first time. Later that same year, he performed with Alum's company at the Exchange Theater on Bank Street in New York. In 1973, Pina Bausch invited him to join the Tanztheater Wuppertal for its inaugural season.
Mercy continued his international collaborations over the following years. In 1974, Manuel Alum invited him again to perform at the 27th American Dance Festival, the Washington Square Church in New York, and the Ted Shawn Theatre during the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. In 1975, he co-founded the dance ensemble La Main alongside Jacques Patarozzi and Malou Airaudo. He subsequently collaborated with Carolyn Carlson on two Paris Opéra productions —Wind, Water, Sand (1976) and The Architects (1980) — and worked with Peter Goss on a 1977 production at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris.
Alongside his stage work, Mercy taught at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen-Werden from 1988 to 2009. Since 1997, he has participated in every restaging of Pina Bausch's The Rite of Spring and Orpheus und Eurydike at the Paris Opéra. Under the direction of Josef Nadj, he co-created the duet Petit Psaume du matin for the 1999 Festival d’Avignon, which was expanded into an evening-length piece for the 2001 Venice Dance Biennale and subsequently toured internationally. In 2003, filmmaker Régis Obadia directed the documentary portrait Dominique Mercy danse Pina Bausch.
Following the death of Pina Bausch, Mercy served as Co-Artistic Director of Tanztheater Wuppertal alongside Robert Sturm from 2009 to 2013. He continued performing as a guest dancer with the company until the 2018/2019 season and remains active as a rehearsal director and consultant.
In 2015, Mercy performed the non-speaking role of Stephen Hawking alongside Jonas Kaufmann in Alvis Hermanis’s staging of La Damnation de Faust at the Paris Opéra. He also served as a rehearsal consultant for the English National Ballet’s restaging of Pina Bausch's The Rite of Spring in 2016. In 2017, together with Malou Airaudo, Jan Minarik, and Helena Pikon, he directed the rehearsal process for Opera Ballet Vlaanderen's restaging of Café Müller. In 2019, he collaborated with Clémentine Deluy and Barbara Kaufmann to restage Iphigenie aufTauris for the Semperoper Ballett in Dresden.
Mercy's contributions to dance have been recognized with numerous honors: he was appointed Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2001, received a Bessie Award in New York in 2002, and was awarded the Légion d’honneur in 2013. In 2022, he was promoted to Officier des Arts et des Lettres.

(Information as of November 2026)