about me

EDUCATION:

 

1976 - 1978  House Economics, Theresienhospital, Nuernberg, Germany

1978 - 1980  Modern Dance, Immo Buhl, Nuernberg/Fuerth, Germany

1980 - 1982  Modern Dance, Dance Associates, Austin/Texas, USA

1981 - 1982  Conscious Movement, Deborah Hay, Austin/Texas, USA

1983 - 2004  Movement Education, Schwarzerden/Rhoen, Germany

1999 - 2004  Dance Therapy, FITT, Frankfurt/Main, Germany

 

since 2000    Authentic Movement

since 1986    free artistic work

 

STATIONS

 

My life, everything I experience and watch, everything that is happening to me is deeply connected to my artistic work.

 

I grew up in different places: small and huge villages, small and big towns. Each place I was living became home for me. I soon came to understand that there is always something outside of my personal cosmos: a before and an afterwards, spacial and temporal differences, as well as many other ways of living.

 

The knowledge of transience sharpens my view of the moment and leads me to intensive experience.

 

The places I am leaving behind. The memory I take with me.

Everything, that remains, is an image.

 

When I was 16 I was an apprentice for Home Economics in a hospital.

Real life…. contact with people, with illness and death and the traces they were bringing up. Cleaning, washing, sewing, cooking, attending. The rhythm of daily life. The rhythm of life, birth and death. All under one roof. Patching up life.

These experiences and the skills, I`ve learned are my first base. They are my connection to life in the process of artistic transformation.

 

Then I discovered dance.

After my first steps with Immo Buhl in Nuernberg, Germany, I went to Austin, Texas in America.

I landed with Deborah Hay.

Her unconventional practices of dance gave my search for the right way of expressing myself depth and perspective. I am still feeding from my experiences.

 

Back in Germany in 1983- 86 I  studied Movement Education at the Schwarzerden School. Their concept of movement came pretty close to my understanding of dance. Posing and pretense were frowned upon. For me that meant an intense involvement with the original form, and, if you like to see it in this way, with the truth content.

 

After these studies I went back to Nuernberg.

I started my freelance work.

 

In Elisabeth Kersten-Will's School for Ballet in Bamberg, Germany, who was 80 years old at that time and a ballerina out of a picture book, I was teaching dance to children and adults.

 

The moment of experience, the refinement of physical and mental perception, the being connected with what I am doing and those I am doing something together with is one of my central concerns.

 

The children classes turned into children's dance theater, coming into pieces.

 

Around this time I discovered performance.

It was no dance and it was no theater. Nevertheless the body and the action were in the center. I welcomed the liberty of creating, outside of established genres, with open arms.

 

Harri Schemm and Johan Lorbeer let me take part in their performative process. They were my teachers. They were speaking about their ideas. I went along with them, took parts and became partner. We laughed a lot.

 

Then I went to Berlin. I got to know my husband and in short intervals our three children were born. The family, supplying for them, the responsibility, the managing of smaller and bigger crises, the constant being available left little space for artistic development.

The real life took all of me. There was no evasion.  Art-worlds seemed sometimes absurd.

 

But always the wish to create something, to find an expression.

 

Looking for images.

Here I am and only from there can I start walking.

 

The life, my life, each sensual and physical perception, the engagement and asking questions are my nourishment, my source and inspiration.