After his studies at the dance academy of Rotterdam, the Swiss Thomas Hauert settled in Brussels. He danced during 3 years with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, then with Gonnie Heggen, David Zambrano and Pierre Droulers.

After creating his solo Hobokendans he founded ZOO and initiated in 1998 the Cows in Space project, a performance for 5 dancers that was awarded at the Rencontres Chorégraphiques Internationales de Bagnolet. "Thomas Hauert and his brand new ZOO company are showing that abstract dance can be a feast, able to transmit tremendous emotions." (Le Temps, 1998)

With the same group of dancers, he went on to create Pop-Up Songbook (1999), Jetzt (2000) and Verosimile (2002). His solo Do You Believe in Gravity? Do You Trust the Pilot? was presented in April 2001. For the performance 5 (2003) he directed Common Senses, an improvisation with 10 dancers.

Thomas Hauert was rewarded with the Swiss Dance and Choreography Award 2005 for his creation modify (2004). Featuring free improvisation within strict boundaries, a baroque sound track and sets in acid colours, modify is a show-kaleidoscope where the wealth of expression found in movement is celebrated during an hour of unbridled transformation. "It electrifies the eye, irritates our thoughts, and renders a controlled principle of permanent modification deliciously astounding. And it is clear there is great art involved." (Danser, March 2005)

Based on literary fragments by the Dutch writer Oscar Van den Boogaard, Walking Oscar (2006) integrates movement, songs and text. "With this labyrinth Thomas Hauert shows once again his unlimited originality… Dancing and singing, without ever losing track of the movement which he accentuates in the extreme, he speaks a complex, magic language between the underlying concept and formal virtuosity. Everything is beautifully solid." (Le Monde, 2006)

In 2007, ZOO\Thomas Hauert and the music ensemble Zefiro Torna joined hands for a new performance based on the medieval tradition of the "musical enigmas" : puzzled. This ambitious project, co-produced by the Festival of Flanders, brings together 13 dancers, singers and musicians on stage. Between image and abstraction, the existential theme that lies at the heart of the musical enigmas develops in an unusual and delicate form.

Created in 2008, Accords is an important stage in ZOO’s research in terms of "choreographic musicality". The dancers have worked at length on developing in the moment a choreographic language of a complexity similar to that found in music. It involves a "democratic" process, based on individual freedom and continually paying attention to the others: a process aimed at obtaining a choreographic complexity beyond that of a written piece. "Dance and music then: if the two together seem obvious, the classical association, then Thomas Hauert brings a new dimension to it. (…) Overturned conditions, broken codes, dismantled forms: the dancer achieves a profound and spontaneous complexity. Dance and music then because one generates the other but also creates the network, inspires the individual and organises the group, all while "colouring" the perception of movement." (La Libre Belgique, 20 May 2008)

Thomas Hauert regularly takes part in improvisation events. He was invited by Sasha Waltz for Vif du Sujet at Festival d’Avignon in 2000, by David Zambrano in the series « David Zambrano Invites… », by Gonnie Heggen, Frans Poelstra and Robert Steijn for the Tarzan project, by Jennifer Monson and Zeena Parkins for Movement Research Fall Festival in New York in 2008…

Thomas Hauert has also been developing teaching methods that are recognised internationally. Apart from an ongoing collaboration with the P.A.R.T.S dance school in Brussels, he gives regular workshops in and outside of Europe. He also created Há Mais (2002) with a group of Mozambican dancers, Milky Way (2000), Lobster Caravan (2004) and 12/8 (2007) with students from P.A.R.T.S., as well as Fold and Twine (2006) at the Laban School of London.