Position: Project Manager – Lighting Designer

Position: Light designer and operator
Art direction and staging: Luc PETIT
Organizers: The City of Bastogne
Production: Les Nocturnales ASBL

Production: Les nocturnales
Direction: Luc Petit
Text: Michel Teheux
Light designer / operator: François Vandermeeren

First collaboration for creation and lighting programming

For this first creative adventure alongside Luc Petit, I had the opportunity to shape the luminous world that accompanies The Christmas Bell Ringers. From the very first discussions, the aim was to find the right emotion—the colour that tells a story, the sparkle that highlights a gesture, or the shadow that leaves room for mystery.
My work took shape as an exploration: how can light resonate with the rhythm of the music? How can the artists be wrapped in a warm, festive, or magical aura depending on the scenes? Each moment was conceived as a small story in itself, a fragment of magic to be revealed with delicacy.
The lighting programming was carried out in the same spirit of sensitivity and precision. Cue after cue, I sought to create a visual breathing space—transitions that go unnoticed yet are felt, and lighting accents that support emotions without ever imposing them.
Working with the artistic and technical teams made it possible to weave a true dialogue between the director’s intentions, the performers’ energy, and the poetry that light can offer. This collaboration gave me a space where creativity could be fully expressed, in the service of the sense of wonder that is so characteristic of Luc Petit’s worlds.
For me, this first shared experience marks the beginning of a joint artistic journey, fuelled by inspiration, attentive listening, and a shared desire: to bring magic to life.

This choreographic transposition of Beethoven’s work has no other idea, no other purpose, no other argument than the music that supports it, nourishes it, and is its sole reason for being.
Dance, here, merely follows the slow journey of the composer from anguish to joy, from darkness to light.
This is not a ballet, in the generally accepted sense of the term, superimposed on a score that is one of the summits of music, but a profound human participation in a work that belongs to all humanity and which is here not only played and sung, but danced, just as Greek tragedy was or all primitive and collective religious manifestations.

Maurice Béjart

A monumental work, driven by extraordinary collective energy.
With Maurice Béjart’s 9th Symphony, the stage becomes a total space where music, dance, and light converge in rare intensity. This iconic piece, powered by Beethoven’s force, demands technical and artistic excellence equal to its ambition.
Bringing together over 200 artists on stage—dancers, choir members, and musicians—the performance operates on a spectacular scale where every element must be perfectly controlled.
On this production, we held the role of lighting technical manager. A key position at the heart of the operation, responsible for implementation, precision, and reliability of the entire system.
Our work involved coordinating teams, ensuring installation and operation, and maintaining perfect execution of the lighting design under all conditions. Anticipation, rigor, and responsiveness were essential to support such a dense work, where every detail matters.
In a production of this magnitude, technique becomes invisible when mastered. This is where success lies: enabling the stage to express itself fully, without constraint, in service of the artists and the audience.

Choreography: Maurice Béjart
Texts: Friedrich Nietzsche, Friedrich von Schiller
Music: Ludwig Van Beethoven, Citypercussion
Original sets, lighting and costumes: Joëlle Roustand, Roger Bernard
Lighting design: Dominique Roman
Costume design: Henri Davila
Technical manager: François Vandermeeren