Biographies

Joachim Schlömer | Foto: Bettina Stöß Joachim Schlömer

Biographies

Joachim Schlömer | © Foto Bettina Stöß

Joachim Schlömer, born in 1962, who originally came from dance theatre, has meanwhile created or directed more than 80 choreographies, operas and plays. He studied architecture and dance at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen, where he also began choreographing.

In 1988 he danced at the La Monnaie Theatre in Brussels, Belgium. Two years later he founded his own company. From 1991, he directed the ballet at the Ulm Theatre, moving to the Tanztheater Weimar in 1994.

From 1996 he took over the direction of the Tanztheater Basel, where he began to dissolve the boundaries between dance, opera and drama. Mikhail Baryschnikov commissioned him to create three choreographies for his White Oak Dance Project.

Since 2001, Schlömer has worked as a freelance choreographer and director – for the Salzburg Festival and the Burgtheater Vienna, Austria, for the Staatstheater Cologne and for the Stuttgart Opera House.

Among his best-known plays are “Und in der Ferne die Nacht” to Bach’s Goldberg Variations, “Hochland oder Der Nachhall der Steine” and “La Guerra d’Amore” to music by Claudio Monteverdi.

 

(Gabriele Wittmann)

Dance encyclopaedia links

.


Institutions:

Folkwang Tanzstudio, Essen


Stage works / video clips:

Choir. Avantgarde | Joachim Schlömer

Gisela Peters-Rohse | Foto: Bettina Stöß Gisela Peters-Rohse

Biographies

Gisela Peters-Rohse | Foto © Bettina Stöß

Gisela Peters-Rohse was born in 1938 and received her professional dance training at Lola Rogge’s modern dance school in Hamburg. She danced at several German city theatres and in parallel trained in a wide variety of dance techniques throughout Europe.

Since 1967 she worked together with her husband Kurt Peters, the founder of the German Dance Archive Cologne, as a dance journalist, especially for the monthly issues of “Das Tanzarchiv”.

From 1970, she was head of the children’s ballet department and the pedagogical seminar for children’s dance at the Rheinische Musikschule, Konservatorium der Stadt Köln. From 1986-2001, she was a lecturer in Laban’s Spatial and Movement Theory, Improvisation and Folk Dance, and Children’s Dance Pedagogy at the Institute for Stage Dance at the Cologne University of Music and Dance.

In addition to her pedagogical work, she became known for many remarkable choreographies for children and developed her own teaching concept and methodology, which she has been teaching for about 10 years at the invitation of various educational institutions in Beijing, Moscow, Leningrad, Singapore, Brazil and Switzerland.

 

(Press office Peters-Rohse)

Dance encyclopaedia links

.


Institutions:

German Dance Archive Cologne

Irina Pauls | Foto: Bettina Stöß Irina Pauls

Biographies

Irina Pauls | Photo © Bettina Stöß

Irina Pauls, born in Leipzig in 1961, received her dance training at the Palucca Schule Dresden. She then studied choreography at the “Hans Otto” Theatre Academy in Leipzig. In 1985-89 she was engaged as ballet master and choreographer at the Landestheater Altenburg.

In 1990 she took over the direction of the newly founded Tanztheater at Schauspiel Leipzig, for which she created a total of 15 world premieres until its dissolution in 1998. She created guest choreographies for companies of other theatres, such as Schauspiel Essen, Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar and Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel Munich.

In 1998-99 she was director of the Dance Theatre at the Staatstheater Oldenburg. She also created free works for non-theatrical spaces, including for the Grassi Museum and the Glass Hall of the Neue Messe in Leipzig.

Since the 2000/01 season, she has directed the TanzTheater Irina Pauls company at the Theater Heidelberg.

 

(Press department Pauls)

Dance encyclopaedia links

.


Institutions:

Palucca Schule Dresden

Amanda Miller | Foto: Bettina Stöß Amanda Miller

Biographies

Amanda Miller | Photo © Bettina Stöß

Humorous, largely abstract, highly musical and deeply rooted in philosophy: a tricky, playful postmodern vocabulary characterises the work of choreographer Amanda Miller, who was born in 1986 from William Forsythe’s Frankfurt company.

Born in 1962 in Chapel Hill, USA, she studied classical and modern dance in her home region at the North Carolina School of Arts and later in New York. She then danced in companies such as the Chicago Lyrical Ballet. In 1980 she came to Germany for an engagement at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. In 1984 she moved to Frankfurt, where she became choreographer in residence after only two years. In 1992 she founded her company “Pretty Ugly”.

She worked freelance until she and her company entered into a cooperation agreement with the Staatstheater Freiburg in 1997 – a cooperation that was considered a model for new directions in dance production in Germany at the time.

With works such as “Four for Nothing”, Miller toured Europe, America, India and Japan.

 

(Gabriele Wittmann)

Dance encyclopaedia links

.


People:

William Forsythe

 

Susanne Linke | Foto: Bettina Stöß Susanne Linke

Biographies

Susanne Linke | Photo © Bettina Stöß

Circling a bathtub, running her hand along the rim, bending her back in a wide arc alternately back and forth: with solos like “In the bathtub” , Susanne Linke became one of the most prominent representatives of the German Dance Theatre.

Born in 1944, she studied with Mary Wigman in Berlin and at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen, danced at the Folkwang Tanzstudio and at the Rotterdamse Dans Center. Together with Reinhild Hoffmann she directed the Folkwang Tanzstudio.

In 1970, she had started choreographing and toured extensively since 1981, with solo works like “Flut” and with group pieces like “Ruhr-Ort”. She choreographed pieces for the José Limón Company in New York, for the Paris Opera Ballet and for the Nederlands Dans Theater.

From 1994 to 2000 she directed the Bremer Tanztheater, partly in cooperation with Urs Dietrich. In 1999 she created together with Reinhild Hoffmann the duet “Über Kreuz”, in which both revealed the origins of their respective movement languages. Today she choreographs and teaches freelance all over the world.

 

(Gabriele Wittmann)

Dance encyclopaedia links

.


Institutions:

Bremer Tanztheater

Folkwang Tanzstudio, Essen


Topics:

German Dance Theatre


Stage works / video clips:

Im Bade wannen | Chor.: Susanne Linke, 1980

Johann Kresnik | Foto: Bettina Stöß Johann Kresnik

Biographies

Johann Kresnik | Photo © Bettina Stöß

Throwing the body into the fight: A quote from Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini declared choreographer Johann Kresnik his motto.

Starting his career in the 1970s, he soon rose to become one of the leading choreographers in German dance theatre with works of highly symbolic, politically motivated, physically demanding weighty body language.

Born in Austria in 1939, he studied theatre and dance until his first engagement in Bremen in 1959. In 1960 he was engaged as a dancer in Cologne, where he danced repertoire by George Balanchine or John Cranko until 1968. In 1968 he was appointed director of the Bremen Dance Ensemble, where he created pieces such as “War Instructions for Everyman” or his own version of “Swan Lake”, set in the world of brutal capitalist competition, in the wake of the war in Vietnam. From 1979 he directed the dance theatre in Heidelberg, where he choreographed his first pieces based on biographies, for example “Sylvia Plath”.

Back in Bremen from 1989, he created masterpieces there such as his work on the German terrorist “Ulrike Meinhof”. In 1994 he moved to the Volksbühne Berlin. Since 2003 he has worked with his ensemble at the Staatstheater Bonn. So far he has created over 30 choreographies.

 

(Gabriele Wittmann)

Dance encyclopaedia links

.


Institutions:

Bremer Tanztheater


Topics:

German Dance Theatre


Stage works / video clips:

Family Dialogue | Choir: Johann Kresnik, 1979

Ulrike Meinhof | Chor.: Johann Kresnik, 1990

Wendewut | Chor.: Johann Kresnik, 1993

Anna Huber | Foto: Bettina Stöß Anna Huber

Biographies

Anna Huber | Photo © Bettina Stöß

Since the 1990s Anna Huber has developed her very specific choreographic language. Fragile yet with extreme clarity, she moves between levels of meaning, for example in her piece “in zwischen räumen”.

Born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1965, she studied dance at the ch-tanztheater from 1985 to 1988. For three years she worked as a dancer in Switzerland, Germany and Austria and for the Tanztheater Cottbus. Later she danced with choreographers such as Susanne Linke, Julyen Hamilton, Kazuo Ohno, Mark Tompkins, Saburo Teshigawara, Meg Stuart, Jo Fabian and Helena Waldmann. Today she works in Switzerland and Berlin, mainly developing solos and duets such as “Beizeiten”, dancing with and against the rough stone façade of a thermal bath or meeting the Taiwanese dancer Lin Yuan Shang in “L’autre et moi” in search of common and non-common places.

.

Her pieces have been shown throughout Europe, Asia and Latin America. She has received numerous awards. In 1998 she was named Young Choreographer of the Year by the magazine “ballet-tanz” and in 2000 she received the Hans Reinhart Ring, Switzerland’s highest theatre award.

 

(Gabriele Wittmann)

Dance encyclopaedia links

.


Stage works / video clips:

Choreographic Avant-Garde | Anna Huber

Henrietta Horn | Foto: Bettina Stöß Henrietta Horn

Biographies

Henrietta Horn | Photo © Bettina Stöß

In a mixture of modern expressive dance and folkloristic elements, choreographer Henrietta Horn combines a wide spectrum: Her sombre “Solo” shows loneliness, table and chair are the only partners. Her amusing “The Rooster is Dead” is a revue with video montages.

Born in 1968, her first training from 1987 to 1992 included mainly so-called “elementary dance” at the Sports University in Cologne. A dance group emerged from her studies, with which she developed her first choreographies. From 1992 to 1996 she continued her studies at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen. Meanwhile, she continued to create her own works. In 1999 she was appointed co-director of the Folkwang Tanzstudio, together with Pina Bausch.

She has toured in Germany and internationally, drawing inspiration from countries like India and Brazil. European folklore largely informs her early piece “Diu Vallende Suht”, which revolves around the St Vitus dance, showing the dancers in a state of apparent loss of control over the movement of their limbs.

One of her best-known pieces is “Auftaucher”, in which the dancers combine and vary movements much like musicians in a jazz improvisation.

 

(Gabriele Wittmann)

Dance encyclopaedia links

.


Institutions:

Folkwang Tanzstudio, Essen


Topics:

German Dance Theatre


Stage works / video clips:

Chor. Avantgarde | Henrietta Horn

Reinhild Hoffmann | Foto: Bettina Stöß Reinhild Hoffmann

Biographies

Reinhild Hoffmann | Photo © Bettina Stöß

The performance in her “Solo with Sofa”, in a long evening dress, tied to a couch, made Reinhild Hoffmann one of the most important choreographers in German dance theatre in 1977.

Born in 1943, she began studying at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen in 1965. Kurt Jooss and Jean Cébron were among her teachers. In 1970 she danced in the ensemble of Johann Kresnik at the Theater Bremen. In 1974 she started as co-director of the Folkwang Tanzstudio, together with Susanne Linke to choreograph herself.

In 1977 she went to New York to study choreography, returning the following year to become director of the Bremer Tanztheater, at times together with Gerhard Bohner, to take over. She stayed in Bremen for eight years, choreographing on the side for her own company, with which she also went on tour.

Four times during the 1980s she was invited to the most important theatre festival in Germany, the Berlin Theatertreffen, and had thus achieved a quality in dance that until then only the famous Pina Bausch. For almost a decade she went to Bochum with her ensemble in 1986. She has been awarded numerous prizes for her work.

Since 1996 she has been choreographing and directing mainly operas.

 

(Gabriele Wittmann)

Dance Encyclopedia Links


Institutions:

Bremer Tanztheater

Folkwang Tanzstudio, Essen


Topics:

German Dance Theatre


Stage works / video clips:

Callas | Chor.: Reinhild Hoffmann, 1983

Föhn | Chor.: Reinhild Hoffmann, 1985

Solo mit Sofa | Chor: Reinhild Hoffmann, 1977

Daniel Goldin | Foto: Bettina Stöß Daniel Goldin

Biographies

Daniel Goldin | Photo © Bettina Stöß

After training as an actor and dancer in Buenos Aires and attending numerous master classes, Argentinean Daniel Goldin, born in 1959, came to Germany in 1987. He became a member of the Folkwang Tanzstudio and danced as a guest with Tanztheater Wuppertal (under the direction of Pina Bausch).

Between 1993 and 1996 Daniel Goldin worked as a freelance dancer and choreographer and has been the dance theatre director of the Städtische Bühnen Münster since the 96/97 season. Daniel Goldin began his choreographic career in 1982.

Goldin’s work identifies him as a border crosser between cultures: his choreographies are influenced by his South American origins, his Ukrainian-Jewish ancestry and his work in Germany.

His style is essentially influenced by German expression dance, which he learned about through Mary Wigman student Renate Schottelius in Argentina. Through his studies at the Folkwang Tanzstudio he expanded his stylistic repertoire to include the unmistakable Folkwang style. His body language has something deeply human about it, expressing sensations and states of mind in all naturalness.

 

(Goldin Press Office)

Dance Encyclopedia Links


Institutions:

Folkwang Tanzstudio, Essen


Topics:

German Dance Theatre


Stage works / video clips:

Choreographic Avant-Garde | Daniel Goldin

William Forsythe | Foto: Bettina Stöß William Forsythe

Biographies

William Forsythe | Photo © Bettina Stöß

A critical anarchist who uses ballet as a technical orientation and as a parody rather than a cultural paradigm. Nevertheless, the choreographer William Forsythe helped this art form to reach new heights in Germany after 1980. Born in New York in 1949, he studied theatre, fine arts and mathematics before training as a dancer at the Joffrey Ballet School. In 1973 he joined the Stuttgart Ballet, where he also choreographed from 1976-81. In 1984 he became director of Ballett Frankfurt, which he led to international fame with pieces such as “Artifact”, “Limb’s Theorem” and “Kammer/Kammer”. He has also created works for ballet companies in Paris, Munich, San Francisco and New York. Most of his more than 100 choreographies are complex works that reveal structures of movement and society, raising levels of theatre and dance as well as questions about philosophy, love, perception, gender, media, film, literature – scientific and also fiction – rock ‘n’ roll, musical and also, as in “Alie/na(c)tion, social issues such as xenophobia. His progressive exploration of movement takes ballet further and further beyond a previous neoclassical or Laban influences.

 

(Gabriele Wittmann)

Dance encyclopaedia links

.


Topics:

Dance and Media


Stage works / video clips:

Dance to Freedom | William Forsythe in Hellerau

Urs Dietrich | Foto: Bettina Stöß Urs Dietrich

Biographies

Urs Dietrich | Photo © Bettina Stöß

Choreographer, dancer. His movements are physically inspiring, his themes are critical reflections of our times in a visual language that unfolds a poetry of space with increasing density. Based on the tradition of dance theatre and German expressive dance, Urs Dietrich has created numerous solo and group pieces since the early 1980s.

He was born in 1958 in Visp, Switzerland, where he first studied textile design. From 1981 – 85 he then studied dance at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen, Germany, and later in New York.

In 1988 he began working as a freelance dancer and choreographer, touring throughout Europe, Asia, India, North and South America. Solo works such as “Da war plötzlich … Herzkammern” or “An der Grenze des Tages” were produced by the Hebbel Theater Berlin.

From 1994 – 96 he directed the Bremer Tanztheater together with his mentor Susanne Linke. From 2000 – 2007 he was the sole director of the Bremer Compagnie. He has won numerous prizes, such as the German Critics Prize in 2004.

 

(Gabriele Wittmann)

Dance encyclopaedia links

.


Institutions:

Folkwang Tanzstudio, Essen

Bremer Tanztheater


Topics:

German Dance Theatre


Stage works / video clips:

Persona | Chor..: Urs Dietrich, 2003

Choreographic Avant-Garde | Urs Dietrich

Gerhard Bohner | Foto: Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln Gerhard Bohner

Biographies

Gerhard Bohner | Foto © Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln

Dancer, choreographer. One of the few personalities in post-war Germany who still trusted in the fundamentals of German expressive dance, choreographer Gerhard Bohner crossed it with the classical dance training he had learned from Tatjana Gsovsky.

Born in Karlsruhe in 1936, he had studied dance there and later in Mary Wigman’s studio in Berlin. After initial engagements in Mannheim and Frankfurt, he danced for 10 years at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, becoming a soloist there in 1964.

At the same time he began choreographing and made a name for himself with works such as “Spannen-Abschlaffen” and “Die Folterungen der Beatrice Cenci” with the participation of dancers such as Sylvia Kesselheim and Marion Cito. In addition, he devoted himself to reinterpreting Bauhaus member Oskar Schlemmer’s famous “Triadic Ballet” by questioning movement and line.

From 1972-1975 he directed the Tanztheater in Darmstadt and from 1978-1981, together with Reinhild Hoffmann, the Bremer Tanztheater.

From 1981 he worked freelance in Berlin, where he died in 1992. Twice he was awarded the German Critics’ Prize.

 

(Gabriele Wittmann)

Dance encyclopaedia links

.


Institutions:

Akademie der Künste Berlin


Topics:

Fine Arts and Dance


Stage works / video clips:

Pictures of an Exhibition | Chor..: Gerhard Bohner, 1981

The Things in My Hand | Chor.: Gerhard Bohner, 1979

 

Foto: “Pina Bausch” by Frederico Novaro Pina Bausch

Biographies

Pina Bausch | © Frederico Novaro | CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0

If there is a synonym for the German Dance Theatre exists, then it is the name Pina Bausch. Since the 1970s, she and her famous company have influenced more than one generation of choreographers with her particular approach to work: asking her dancers questions, thus obtaining emotionally charged movement material from everyday life.

Born in 1940, she studied dance in the USA and at the Folkwang Schule in Essen from 1955 to 1962. She then danced for six years with the Folkwang Ballet under the famous choreographer Kurt Jooss. Having already created her own works, she became director of the Folkwang Dance Studio in 1969.

Since 1973 she has now directed her own company, Tanztheater Wuppertal, which has become world-famous through extensive touring. Of her early pieces, “Cafe Müller”, in which she dances herself, and “Kontakthof”, which she later reconstructed with older amateur dancers from her hometown, are the best known.

She has received numerous awards.

She has received numerous awards and has created more than 50 full-length pieces in total, most recently often inspired by a specific foreign culture she was researching on location for a particular work.

 

(Gabriele Wittmann)

Dance encyclopaedia links

.


Institutions:

Folkwang Tanzstudio, Essen


Topics:

German Dance Theatre