Guest Professors

Winter Term 2016/2017

Jochen Roller

Jochen Roller studied Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen and Choreography at the Laban Centre in London. He has choreographed over 50 works so far for dance and theatre. His regional work focus is besides Europe the regions of South-East Asia and Oceania. His three-hour solo-trilogy „perform performing“ (2002-2004) was performed 147 times and was sold in 2009 by the auction house Christie’s in Hamburg. His current trilogy “finding Germany elsewhere”, a choreographic exploration of German identity, comes after “Trachtenbummler” (2013) and “Them and Us” (2015) to a close with its last part “Blutsbrüder” in October 2017. His latest theatre production “Carla del Ponte trinkt in Pristina einen Vanilla Chai Latte” premiered in December 2016 in Kosovo and is since touring through Eastern and Western Europe. Jochen works as choreographer, teacher and curator. In his works, workshops and curatorial programs he looks at intercultural, social and political themes that are put into motion. Movement is hereby defined as a medium of communication of intelligent bodies which enter a confrontative dialog in an empathetic and intellectual manner. Choreography is thus understood as an act of aesthetic and social design. From 2007 until 2010 Jochen curated together with Anne Kersting the seasonal dance program of Kampnagel Hamburg. In this period he founded together with 7 European performing art centers the annual Live Art Festival. He was artistic director of the editions 2009 and 2010. Jochen worked as a jury member for Tanzplattform in 2010 and Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes in 2011 und in 2012. Since 2004 Jochen Roller has been listed by the Goethe Institute as one of Germany’s most influential choreographers. For the academic year 2016 / 2017 Jochen is appointed as guest professor at the MA Performance Studies course at the university of Hamburg.

Winter Term 2015/16

Antonia Baehr

Antonia Baehr is a choreographer. What characterizes her is a non-disciplinary work and a method of collaboration with different people, using a game-structure with switching roles: each person is alternately director / author / host and performer / guest for the other one.
1994 she co-founded the Berlin-based performance group “ex machinis”. She graduated in Film- and Media Arts at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin with Valie Export (1996) and obtained a DAAD-grant and a Merit Scholarship for the School of The Art Institute of Chicago. There she completed her Master in Performance with Lin Hixson of the performance group Goat Island and began collaborating with William Wheeler. Since 2000 she is based in Berlin. She was co-organizing “Labor Sonor”, experimental music and performance series, at KuLe from 2001 to 2003, and co-hosted the festival “Radioriff” that took place in December 2003 at Ausland, Berlin. From 2006 until 2008 she was associated artist in residence at “Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers” in France. In 2008 she published her book and her vinyl “Rire / Laugh / Lachen”. From March to May 2013, the Beursschouwburg in Brussels curated a three-month program that included performances, films and an exhibition: “make up – at Antonia Baehr and Werner Hirsch’s table”. This focus program featured works by artists who have been collaborating with Hirsch and Baehr in various and switching roles for many years, as well as a wide selection of works by Baehr and Hirsch themselves. Her book “Abecedarium Bestiarium – Portraits of affinities in animal metaphors” came out in January 2014.

Antonia Baehr’s productions include: “Holding Hands” (2001), “Un après-midi” (2003), “Cat Calendar” together with Antonija Livingstone (2004), “Larry Peacock” co-produced by Sabine Ercklentz and Andrea Neumann (2005), “Merci” (2006), “Rire / Laugh / Lachen” (2008), “For Faces” (2010), “My Dog is My Piano” (2012), “Abecedarium Bestiarium” (2013), “The Wildes” together with Ida Wilde (Keren Ida Nathan) (2014).

Antonia Baehr is the producer of the horse whisperer and dancer Werner Hirsch, the musician and choreographer Henri Fleur, and the composer Henry Wilt.

 

Winter Term 2014/15

Ivana Müller

Winter Term 2013/14

Laurent Chétouane

Laurent Chétouane, born in Soyaux, France in 1973, is one of the most controversial directors of the German theater and original artists of the contemporary dance.

After studying engineering, he completed a program in theater studies at the Paris Sorbonne and theater directing at Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt/M. Since the late 1990s, Chétouane came to develop an unmistakable style. In his theater works, he upends our habits of vision for the long term by presenting texts, gestures, and movement consciously and as if under the control of another. Since 2006, Chétouane has worked as a choreographer. With his Tanzstücken #1-#4, a second line emerged in his work dealing with the necessity and meaning of movement. In his performanceHommage an das Zaudern (2011) he reduces events to a zero point where gestures of questioning draw their arresting power from the shadow side of the deed. To develope his choreographic work Chétouane collaborates on a regular basis with the dancers Matthieu Burner, Joris Camelin, Sigal Zouk and others. For Tanzstück #1: Bildbeschreibung by Heiner Müller Chétouane received the Wild Card of RUHR.2010 and that same year was awarded the Förderpreis des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen. In 2012, Chétouane staged Kleist’s Erdbeben von Chili at Schauspiel Köln and the Rihm project Auf Kolonos at Staatstheater Karlsruhe.

He has taught as guest professor at the Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft Gießen (Direction: Heiner Goebbels) and Freie Universität Berlin and has also taught in Oslo, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Leipzig, and Bochum. From 2012 on Chétouane is Artistic Director of the masters programme dramaturgy at the Institut für Theater-, Film- und Medienwissenschaft at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt/M. (Direction: Nikolaus Müller-Schöll).

 

Winter Term 2012/13

Jonathan Burrows

Jonathan Burrows was born in County Durham, England, in 1960. After studying at The Royal Ballet School for eight years from the ages of eleven to nineteen, he was accepted into the Royal Ballet on an ‘Apprentice Choreographer’ contract. During the thirteen years he spent as a ballet dancer he made a number of early pieces of choreography for the Royal Ballet Chorographic Group, the Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, Extemporary Dance Company, Spiral Dance Company, Riverside Studios, Dance Umbrella and The Place Theatre, while also playing an increasingly active role as a dancer, rising to the rank of soloist.In 1986, while still a ballet dancer, he met and began to perform with the experimental choreographer Rosemary Butcher, with whom he continued to work on and off until 1999.

In 1988 he presented his first full length evening Hymns at The Place Theatre, followed by Dull Morning Cloudy Mild (1989) and Stoics (1991), which toured small English venues and was the first of his pieces to be invited abroad. At this point Burrows left The Royal Ballet and formed his own company The Jonathan Burrows Group, based at The Place Theatre, London.

In 1989 he had begun his long collaboration with the composer Matteo Fargion, whom he had met through connections with the UK International Choreographic Course For Choreographers and Composers. Fargion began immediately to play a vital role in the work, composing, choreographing and performing in many pieces.

It was through Fargion that in 1994 Burrows began an occasional two years of study with the composer Kevin Volans, who wrote music for a number of pieces and whose influence has been central to the development of the work of the two collaborators.

Over the eight years from 1991 until 1999 the Jonathan Burrows Group made five pieces: Very (1992), Our (1994), The Stop Quartet (1996), Quintet (1996) and Things I Don’t Know (1997), which were performed widely and began to attract an international reputation.

From 2000 onwards Burrows decided to break with the company model of working and concentrate on one to one collaborations with other artists, who would share the conception, making, performing and administrating of the work.

The first collaboration made this way was Weak Dance Strong Questions (2001), created with the Dutch theatre maker and performer Jan Ritsema, which opened at the 2001 Panacea Festival in Stockholm and subsequently toured to 14 countries.

This was followed by the start of a series of duets with Matteo Fargion, beginning in 2002 with Both Sitting Duet, followed by The Quiet Dance (2005), Speaking Dance (2006), Cheap Lecture (2009), The Cow Piece (2009) and Counting To One Hundred (2011). The two men have now given over 200 performances across Belgium, Germany, UK, Canada, Japan, Portugal, Italy, Austria, France, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Spain, Croatia, Ireland, USA, Finland, Lithuania, Brazil, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, South Korea, Greece, Romania, Hungary, Turkey and Australia. Both Sitting Duet won a 2004 New York Dance and Performance ‘Bessie’ Award, and Cheap Lecture was chosen for the prestigious 2009 Het Theaterfestival in Belgium.

In 2010 Burrows worked with a new partner, the dancer Chrysa Parkinson, on Dogheart, which premiered at Kaaitheater in Brussels. In the same year he also made Holding them in front of you with Adrian Heathfield, which opened the Performance Matters season at Toynbee Hall, London.

Other high profile collaborators include Sylvie Guillem’s performance of his choreography in Adam Roberts’ film Blue Yellow in 1996, his invitation in 1997 to choreograph Walking/music for William Forsythe’s Ballet Frankfurt and Duet (1999) made in collaboration with Akram Khan for Desert Steps, an evening of the music of Kevin Volans. In 2008 he was Associate Director on Peter Handke’s The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other for the National Theatre, London.

Written work includes A Choreographer’s Handbook (2010) published by Routledge.

Burrows has also been curator for As it is (1998) at The South Bank Centre London and Parallel Voices (2007) for the Siobhan Davies Studios London.

He was an Associate Artist 1992- 2002 at Kunstencentrum Vooruit in Gent, Belgium, Artist-In-Residence at London’s South Bank Centre 1998/9 and is currently Artist-In-Residence at Kaaitheater Brussels. In 2002 he was given an award by the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts In New York, in recognition for his ongoing contributions to contemporary dance.

Since 2002 he has led workshops in Australia, UK, Japan, Belgium, Brazil, USA, Lithuania, Austria, Germany, Norway, Korea, France, Croatia, Italy, Sweden, Ireland, Poland and Canada. He is a visiting member of faculty at P.A.R.T.S, the school of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker in Brussels, and has also been a Visiting Professor for the Department of Drama and Theatre at Royal Holloway, University Of London, the Performance Studies Department of Hamburg University, the Institute for Theatre Studies at the Free University Berlin and the Koninklijke Academie van Schone Kunsten Gent. Burrows holds an Honorary Doctorate from Royal Holloway University of London.

 

Winter Term 2011/12

Boris Charmatz

Boris Charmatz is a dancer. He invents frameworks and lays down ideas into them: Bocal (2002-2004), nomadic and ephemeral school, to transmit without a master. Association edna (1997-2009), a toolbox organizing shows, exhibitions, films, residences. And since 2009, the Rennes and Britanny National Choreographic Centre, renamed Dancing Museum, which shelters time (préfiguration), debates (expo zero), exhibitions (héliogravures, service commandé, brouillon), writings and voices (rebutoh). Each of those frameworks is for him the occasion to broaden the ways of producing, to transmit and to think dancing.

Therefore Boris Charmatz is a dancer. With Isabelle Launay, he co-signed Entretenir/à propos d’une danse contemporaine (Les Presses du Réel/ 2003). « Je suis une école », published at éditions Les Prairies Ordinaires is a laboratory book signed in the name of many.

Besides, Boris Charmatz is a dancer. Aatt enen tionon (1996) is a vertical play with too many letters, héâtre-élévision, a show inside a television set, with letters missing, La danseuse malade (2008), a choreography with Jeanne Balibar, in all letters, inside a truck.

Boris Charmatz is also a dancer. He regularly improvises with Saul Williams and his voice, Archie Shepp and his saxophone, Médéric Collignon and his trumpet, or still Steve Paxton.
And finally, Boris Charmatz is a dancer: for Odile Duboc, Meg Stuart, Pierre Alferi, Fanny de Chaillé. With Raimund Hoghe and Julia Cima (régi, 2006). With ideas, letters, bodies, places.

 

Winter Term 2010/11

Tim Etchells

Tim Etchells is an artist whose work moves from performance into and
across many other disciplines, from visual art to video and photography to fiction and dialogue-based events. For his workshop with the students of Performance Studies he made a proposal that arises from his work, it’s approaches and it’s concerns, inviting students to think and work together and alone on questions, tasks and personal investigations.

“In performance and in art practice my work is often concerned with liveness and presence, with the unfolding of events in time and place. The place where things happens could be an LCD monitor or a computer screen, a stage, the space of a page, a gallery, a found site, a street, or some private space – a room or a car for instance – in which a person might listen to the radio or read a text. In each work or project something happens – there is an encounter, a process, the unfolding of an event and its implications and an exploration of the dynamic relationship between the work and the viewer. At the centre of many of the projects there is a fascination with rules and systems in language and in culture, on the way these systems are both productive and constraining. Many of the projects also stage or imply an event, an idea, or an object that is at the same time unravelled and assembled. The mechanisms and economies of this process – of exposure and concealment, construction and deconstruction, appearance and disappearance – are at the heart of what I do.”

 

Winter Term 2009/10

Jonathan Burrows

see above

 

Winter Term 2008/09

Helgard Haug, Daniel Wetzel (Rimini Protokoll)

Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel studied at the Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft in Giessen and work together (in various combinations) under the name of Rimini Protokoll. They are recognized as being among the leaders and creators of the theatre movement known as “Reality Trend” (Theater der Zeit), which has exerted a powerful influence on the alternative theatre scene. Each project begins with a concrete situation in a specific place and is then developed through an intense exploratory process. They have attracted international attention with their dramatic works, which take place in that colourful zone between reality and fiction. Since 2000, Rimini Protokoll has brought its “theatre of experts” to the stage and into city spaces, interpreted by non-professional actors who are called “experts” for that very reason. Since 2004 Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi und Daniel Wetzel are based at Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) Berlin.

Among others, the three have created Shooting Bourbaki (Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel), which won the NRW-Impulse Prize in 2003 (the same year the “Theater” magazine yearbook called them the most promising young directors of the year); Deadline (Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel), presented in the Berlin Theatre Encounters in 2004; Schwarzenbergplatz (Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel), nominated in Austria for the Nestroy Prize for Theatre, and Wallenstein (Haug/Wetzel), performed in the Theatre Encounters in 2006.
Their extremely topical pièce, Mnemopark (Kaegi), won the Jury Prize at the Politik im freienTheater (Politics in Free Theatre) Festival, while Karl Marx: Das Kapital. Erster Band (Haug / Wetzel) won the Mülheimer Dramatiker Prize in 2007. In November 2007, Haug, Kaegi and Wetzel were awarded the German DER FAUST prize for theatre and in April 2008 they gained the European Theatre Prize in Thessaloniki in the cateory New Realities. “Call Cutta in a box” won a Honorary Mention by the Prix Ars Electronica 09 (International Competition for Cyber Arts) in the category Interactive Art. 2011 they were awarded the Silver Lion of the 41th biennale of venice, established to honour new theatrical realities.

 

Sommer Term 2007

Thomas Lehmen

Thomas Lehmen is a German choreographer, dancer, performer and teacher. Born 1963, he studied at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam. His productions “distanzlos” (1999), “mono subjects” (2001), “Schreibstück” (2002), “Stationen” (2003), “Funktionen” (2004), “It’s better to…” (2004) and “Lehmen lernt” (2006), “Schrottplatz” (2010) are touring world wide. “Schreibstück” and “Funktionen” have accompanying publications. Thomas teaches a.o. in Arizona, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Berlin, Reykjavik, and gives workshops worldwide. In his work and his teaching, he is interested in communications and creative relations of human beings and their constitutive factors.

 

Winter Term 2007/08

Eszter Salamon

Following the classical dance studies at the National Acadamy of Dance in Budapest, Eszter Salamon moves to France in 1992, and works with choreographers such as Sidonie Rochon, Mathilde Monnier and Francois Verret.

In 2000, she presents with Brenda Edwards the duo Où Sont Les Femmes ? as part of «Potlatch Dérives» at the festival Montpellier Danse 2000.

In 2001, she creates the solo What A Body You Have, Honey in Nurenberg. The same year she presents Giszelle in collaboration with Xavier le Roy for the event «Le vif du sujet» for the Festival d’Avignon 2001.

In 2002, she creates in collaboration with Herman Diephuis and Simone Verde Répétition d’Un Travail En Cours within the programme «Hors séries» at the Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier. She presents 18 women from the age of 7 to 74 Woman Inc.© at the Comédie de Clermont-Ferrand.

In 2003, she assists in the direction and the choreography of the opera Theater der Wiederholungen by Bernhard Lang, at the «Steirischer Herbst» festival, Graz – cultural capital 2003.

In 2004, she presents Reproduction for the Körperstimmen «n° 9» festival at Podewil Berlin where she is artist-in-residence. She is a laureate of the “Villa Medici Hors les Murs” scholarship.

In May 2005, Eszter Salamon presents Magyar Tancok, in the frame of the «Les Intranquilles» festival in Lyon and stages the music of Karim Haddad in the frame of the project Seven attempted excapes from Silence at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin.

At the beginning of 2006, the premier of Nvsbl took place at the Coreographischen Zentrum NRW-PACT Zollverein, Essen.

In 2007, she presented AND THEN in Lyon, Les Subsistances, France, and with Aranxta Martinez a concert-performance called Without you I am nothing.

In the frame of the Kunstenfestivaldearts, in Burssels, in May 2008, she presented together with Christine De Smedt the duet Dance #1 / Driftworks. Currently, she is participating with a choreographic research project 6M1L (6 Month 1 Place), at the Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier, France.

 

Winter Term 2006/07

Kattrin Deufert, Thomas Plischk (Deufert&Plischke)

Kattrin Deufert and Thomas Plischke aka artistwin deufert&plischke live and work in Berlin. Since 2001 they have produced a large number of theater projects in collaboration, works that deal with the situations of artistic production and the complex dynamics embedded in artistic processes. The artistwin’s artistic language transgresses the frame of theater and dance and focuses on proximity, individual partaking and the social life within the artistic realm. In their recent work they create environments that offset the everyday by integrating and processing it extensively into the artwork, environments that invite to spend time.

Together with friends and colleagues from art and theory they developed a.o. the Anarchiv series (2008 a.o. Kaaitheater Brussels, Kampnagel Hamburg, Tanzquartier Wien, PACT Zollverein Essen), the Emergence Rooms (2010 a.o. Museum of Modern Art MuMoK Vienna, Superbodies Triennial Hasselt, Würtembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart) and the Entropic Institute (2012 a.o. Tanzfabrik Berlin, Sofia Arsenal Museum of Contemporary Art SAMCA, Fridge Sofia).