After graduating in 2003 from the CNSMD of Paris, François Chaignaud has collaborated with numerous choreographers (Alain Buffard, Boris Charmatz, Emmanuelle Huynh, Gilles Jobin). Since the creation of his first piece in 2004, he has taken up a multiplicity of roles as dancer, choreographer, singer, actor, historian, and cabaret artist. His work—which weaves the aspiration for dance of a comprehensive expression delving into the porosity and potential of bodies—is early on characterized by the singing and dance articulation (Думи мої, 2013). Degreed in history, he nourishes his art with in-depth research. The historical depth reflects in his own pieces as well as in the numerous collaborations he has done, and continues to do, including with cabaret artist Jérôme Marin (Sous l’ombrelle, 2011), Marie Caroline Hominal (Duchesses, 2009), and visual artist Théo Mercier (Radio Vinci Park, 2016). Between 2005 and 2016, Chaignaud creates with Cecilia Bangolea a series of noteworthy shows that are showed worldwide, including Pâquerettes (2005–2008), Sylphides (2009), (M)IMOSA (co-written with and performed with Trajal Harrell and Marlene Monteiro Freitas, 2011), Dub Love (2013), and DFS (2016). In 2021, he founds the organization mandorle productions, which supports his desire to follow a line of artistic creation marked by numerous collaborations. With Nina Laisné, he creates Romances inciertos, un autre Orlando (2017). The piece is presented at the 72nd edition of the Festival d’Avignon and brings together signing and dance around androgynous figures drawn from Spanish Baroque folklore.

In his ongoing relationship to music, Chaignaud presented Symphonia Harmoniæ Cælesitum Revelationum (2019) with Marie-Pierre Brébant, a piece in which he signs the complete repertoire of Hildegard von Bingen. In 2020, he co-created with the butoh pioneer Akaji Maro the duet GOLD SHOWER. In the same year he performed Un boléro, a choreography developed in dialogue with Dominique Brun based on Bronislava Nijinska’s oeuvre. In recent years, Chaignaud has developed a choreographic practice outside of his own work on stage. In 2018, he made Soufflette for fourteen dancers of the Norwegian ballet company Carte Blanche, in 2022, he created t u m u l u s, a work for thirteen performers, with Geoffroy Jourdain (Les Cris de Paris) and the short piece Blasons for the company Dançando com a Diferença. In 2023 he created Cortèges at the Paris Philharmonic with composer Sasha J. Blondeau, and Mirlitons with beatboxer Aymeric Hainaux. In 2024, François Chaignaud and Geoffroy Jourdain pursued their collaboration with the show In Absentia. The same year, the Musée du Louvre and the Festival d’Automne à Paris commissioned a work from François Chaignaud and he created Petites joueuses—a collective work in the form of an itinerary for the moat of the Louvre Médiéval. In 2025 Nina Laisné and François Chaignaud rejoin, this time with Argentinian singer Nadia Larcher for the creation of the show Último helecho.
A portrait is dedicated to him on the occasion of the Festival d’Automne à Paris 2025.
In 2026 François Chaignaud is appointed director of the Centre chorégraphique national de Caen en Normandie.

Chaignaud received the prize “Personnalité choréographique” [Personality of choreography] from the French Syndicate of Critique in 2021. A Knight of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, he is an associate artist at Chaillot – Théâtre national de la Danse as well as the Maison de la danse and the Biennale de la danse de Lyon.

Founded in 2020 to accompany the projects and collaborations of François Chaignaud mandorle productions‘ vocation is to produce new works of live performance, to diffuse these creations and all the pieces of the repertoire that the context makes relevant, to share experiences and techniques of creation with audiences and practitioners of all ages. The artistic project of mandorle productions is motivated by partnerships and cooperations with other artists, and sometimes their production structures. This project promotes the ideal of a pivotal artist – blotter – link, weaving a network of signatures and shared writings, far from the still dominant image of the demiurge, authoritarian and solitary artist. mandorle productions aims to create choreographic works in which dance opens up the possibility of total art: a kinetic, gestural, sonic and visual event. Collaborations with artists from the worlds of fashion, music, song, plastic art and health care serve the quest for a body with infinitely extensible and renewable powers. Hierarchies between disciplines (dance, music) and positions (choreographer, performer…) become blurred.