Franz Anton Cramer
Franz Anton Cramer studied philology and theatre in Berlin, obtaining a PhD at Freie Universität in 1998. Besides his extensive activity as dance journalist he has been working on dance archives since 2003. He currently conducts the research project “Records and Representations. Media and constitutive systems in archiving performance-based art” at the Inter-University Centre for Dance (HZT) Berlin where he also co-directed the BA course “Contemporary Dance, Context, Choreography” from 2007 until 2010, together with Gisela Müller and Boris Charmatz. Between 2003 and 2008 he collaborated with the Leipzig Dance Archives, the Centre national de la danse and the Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra de Paris in a project investigating dance in the 1930s and 40s. He has also been part of an initiative to federate several German dance documentation centres between 2008 and 2012 as part of “Tanzplan Deutschland”, resulting in the online tool www.digitaler-atlas-tanz.de. Together with Barbara Büscher, he is co-editor of the special-interest magazine “MAP Media-Archive-Performance” (www.perfomap.de). From 2007 to 2013 he was a fellow at the Collège international de philosophie in Paris. In 2013/14 he collaborated with several French and German festival venues in the workshop series “Transfabrik”, at the invitation of Institut français. He regularly lectures in and outside the academy.
Recent Publications:
- Transfabrik Deutschland/Frankreich – Begegnungen mit zeitgenössischer Bühnenkunst (ed.). München 2014.
- In aller Freiheit: Tanzkultur in Frankreich zwischen 1930 und 1950. Berlin “Experience as Artefact. Transformations of the Immaterial”. In: Dance Research Journal Vol. 46 Nr. 3, December 2014.
- “La scène et le musée, une dynamique contemporaine”. In: Critique d'art. Actualité internationale de la littérature critique sur l'art contemporain, Nr. 43, autumn 2014.
- “Warfare over Realism: Tanztheater in East Germany, 1966–1989”. In: Susan Manning und Lucia Ruprecht (eds.), New German Dance Studies. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Ulrike Quade
The Ulrike Quade Company produces visual theatre performances under the artistic direction of Ulrike Quade. Contemporary and existential themes are given shape through monumental scenography and varied dramatic mediums, including life-size puppets. In search of new theatrical forms, the Ulrike Quade Company often collaborate with other artists and institutions on national and international co-productions. Recent partners include Jo Strømgren Kompani (N), Nicole Beutler Projects (NL) and Stadttheater Basel (CH).
Ulrike Quade (b. 1971, Neuss, Germany) graduated from the University of the Arts in Utrecht as a theatre maker. She studied Puppetry in Japan and received a Master Degree in Scenography in collaboration with the St. Martin's Collage of Art and Design in London. With an impressive command of performance and technology, the company under her direction bring handmade human figures to life with such skill that audiences see humans instead of puppets. Quade makes theatre that is committed and layered, but also surprisingly elegant, surreal, ironic and poetic.
The Ulrike Quade Company has produced the following performances: Krabat, Meester van de Zwarte Molen (2014), De Schreeuw van de Zonnebloem (2014), The Painters – Munch & Van Gogh (2013), Antigone (2012), Radio Exit Live (2011), Hondenliefde (2011), Lisa's Grote Reis (2009), The Writer (2009), The Wall (2008), Second Goodbye (2008) and Me Too – a side show (2007).
Ulrike Quade Company works on innovation. The Company gets support to scout and develop new talents and to do research in the field of puppetry and visual theatre.
Elizabeth Waterhouse
Born in upstate New York, Liz received her first dance education at Albany Dance Institute and the School of American Ballet. She graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor degree in physics and completed her Master degree at The Ohio State University in dance. Reconciliation of art and science continues to be a central tenet of her work.
Liz is currently a doctoral student at the Graduate School of the Arts in Bern. Her thesis takes the scientific concept of entrainment – the capacity of systems to synchronize – as an opener: asking what philosophy of movement and the body is necessary to theorize practitioners' experience of entrainment in contemporary dance, delaying the theoretical problem of understanding whether improvization and choreography are justifiably distinct or co-operative processes, and yielding when the melt of examples and severed discourses is ready to deal with subjectivity, material, and process in the real of dancing together.
Liz was invited by William Forsythe to join Ballet Frankfurt/The Forsythe Company, where she was a dancer from 2004–2012. She has also performed with Marcus Schulkind, Sebastian Matthias, and Collective Ludwig. Working as a freelance choreographer, her recent works include the Ingeborg Ruvina Project at Theater Rigiblick in Zürich, Josefine at Opera Krefeld and “Don't Play! Eine Spectralgymnastic” at the Schaubühne Lindenfels in Leipzig. Her performance-lecture series “Dance | SPEAK TO ME!” was produced by Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in 2014. As a dramaturg she has worked with William Forsythe on Sider, the collective MaMaZa on Eifo Efi, as well on projects in design and photography. In 2013 she was awarded a fellowship for dramaturgy from Akademie Musiktheater Heute.
Liz's writing on dance is published in diverse sources, including Contact Quarterly, the International Journal of Digital Media and Performance, Etcetera Magazine and the book Theater Ohne Fluchtpunkt. She is also engaged in new forms of digital and internet publishing, for example as a consultant to the online project “Synchronous Objects” and the workgroup “Dance Engaging Science”.
As a teacher she has offered workshops and lectures internationally, including at the Universität Bern, the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt am Main, The Croatian Institute for Movement and Dance (HIPP) and Stanford University. Liz teaches regularly in Frankfurt for Tanzlabor21 at Künstlerhaus Mousonturm. Liz was a member of the project InnoLernenTanz at the Palucca Hochschule and was on faculty at Emerson College in Boston. She is certified instructor of the GYROTONIC® method and a certified Pilates Mat instructor from the Kane School of Core Integration in New York City.
Liz's current projects adhere to the following principles: non-hierarchical work structures (i.e. teamwork, collaboration, working alone); working productively with doubt towards invention; simultaneously pursuing aesthetic, embodied, and discursive rigor; meaningful communication to novices and experts; and maintaining a sense of humor. Her research interests include aesthetics and metaphysics of choreography, entrainment, object usage, documentation of collective practice, musicality, and notation forms.