Thierry De Mey was born in Belgium in 1956. He is a composer and filmmaker whose work is guided by an instinctive feel for movement, a “refusal to understand rhythm as a simple combination of lengths within a temporal scheme, but as a system generating collapses and new developments” that is the backbone of his writing in film and in music. A significant portion of his compositions are for dance and cinema. For choreographers Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Wim Vandekeybus, and his sister Michèle Anne De Mey, he is often much more than a composer; he is also a precious collaborator in the invention of “formal strategies”, to use one of his preferred expressions. His main creations and compositions include Rosas danst Rosas (1983, winner of the Bessie Awards in New York in 1988 and the Eve du Spectacle Prize in Brussels in 1989), Amor constante (1994), April me (2002), Kinok (1993) (choreographed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker ; What the body does not remember (1987), Les porteuses de mauvaises nouvelles (1989), Le poids de la main (choreographed by Wim Vandekeybus – 1990), Dantons Töd (directed by Bob Wilson – 1998), Musique de tables, Frisking (1987), and Counter Phrases (2005).

In 1984, he and Peter Vermeersch founded Maximalist!, a musician/composer group for which he composed numerous pieces including Balatum (1984) for percussion, written for a dance piece of the same name choreographed by Michèle-Anne de Mey. He also helped to found the Ictus Ensemble, which premiered several of his pieces, conducted by Georges-Elie Octors. In June 1993, Thierry De Mey joined IRCAM to develop several programs in computer music and gave composition classes and lectures on the relationship between dance and music. He was an artist-in-residence at Fresnoy in 1998, and a composer-in-residence at the Festival Musica in Strasbourg in 2001 and 2002, as well as a featured guest of the Musique en Scène festival in Lyon in 2004. His music has been performed by renowned ensembles such as Quatuor Arditti, the Hilliard Ensemble, the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, Muzik Fabrik, and the Orchestre Symphonique de Lille. His installations, which feature music, dance, video, and interactive processes, have been shown at events such as the Venice and the Lyon Biennale, as well as in numerous museums. Petites formes was born of a composition workshop led by De Mey in 2007.

De Mey also teaches extensively, giving workshops, lectures, summer courses, and composition classes. He has directed the choreographic composition program at PARTS (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios) in Brussels since the Studios were founded, and several of his students have gone on to forge international reputations. He is also an affiliate of the interdisciplinary European program D.A.N.C.E. — a professional training program for young dancers — directed by Frédéric Flamand, William Forsythe, Wayne McGregor, and Angelin Preljocaj. In 2005, he was appointed as one of the four artistic directors of Charleroi Danse, the Choreographic Center for French-speaking Belgium.

In the multimedia realm, his major works include Deep in the woods (2002-2004), which brought together more than 70 dancers and choreographers and Counter Phrases (2003-2004), in which he involved the composers Steve Reich, Fausto Romitelli, Magnus Lindberg, Toshio Hosokawa, Georges Aperghis, Jonathan Harvey, Luca Francesconi, Robin De Raaf, and Stefan Van Eycken. In 2003, his work process with ATDK on April me was the subject of a documentary titled Corps Accords, produced by ARTE. The following year, the British Council and the BBC invited De Mey to direct Dance Film Academy, an original dance/television experiment in March 2005. That same year, three of his films were broadcast on the ARTE channel. In 2009, Equi Voci premiered at the Charleroi Danse Biennale, a poliptych of dance films with orchestral accompaniment. Another dance film, La Valse, choreographed by Thomas Hauert and ZOO, was subsequently added to this project.

In 2006, he created an installation based on the Perrault fairy tale Bluebeard titled Barbe Bleue, and a film on the choreography of William Forsythe titled One Flat Thing reproduced, which aired on ARTE. From Inside, an interactive installation, premiered at the Charleroi Danse Biennale in 2007. Another installation titled Rémanences, created using a thermal imaging camera, premiered in March 2010 in Belgium and in France at the VIA and EXIT festivals.

Traceless, a piece for five musicians, premiered in 2014 in a performance by the Ensemble Intercontemporain at the Acht Brücken Festival in Cologne. His installation Solid Traces was the opening piece of the 2015 Charleroi Danse Biennale.

Simplexity, la beauté du geste, a creation for five dancers and five musicians, premiered in May 2016 in Brussels during the Kunstenfestivaldesart. In 2017-2018, Thierry de Mey was the associate composer for Cursus, IRCAM’s composition and computer music course, whose final concert was held on 16 June 2018 at the Centquatre-Paris, with the participation of the Conservatoire de Paris.