Sasha Waltz

Sasha Alexandra Waltz (born 8 March 1963, Karlsruhe) is a German choreographer, dancer and leader of the dance company Sasha Waltz and Guests.

Waltz is the daughter of an architect and a curator. At the age of five years she had her first dance lesson in Karlsruhe with Waltraud Kornhass, a student of Mary Wigman. From 1983 until 1986, Waltz studied at the School For New Dance Development in Amsterdam.

Between 1986 and 1987, she did further training in New York. During that period she was a dancer for Pooh Kaye, Yoshiko Chuma & School of Hard Knocks and Lisa Kraus. After that she collaborated intensely with choreographers, visual artists and musicians such as Tristan Honsinger, Frans Poelstra, Mark N Tompkins, David Zambrano.

From 1992 onwards she was artist in residence in Künstlerhaus Bethanien. There she developed a series of "dialogues" in interdisciplinary projects with dancers, musicians and visual artists (Nasser Martin-Gousset, Takako Suzuki, Charlotte Zerbey, Ákos Hargitai). A year later in 1993, she founded her company "Sasha Waltz and Guests" with Jochen Sandig. Over the next 3 years they developed the Travelogue-Trilogy.

Together with Jochen Sandig, they founded the Sophiensæle in central Berlin, as a center for the development of free theatre and dance. Here they developed Allee der Kosmonauten (1996), Zweiland (1997) and Na Zemlje (1998), as well as the project Dialoge `99/I.

In 1999, she took over as artistic director at Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin alongside Thomas Ostermeier, Jens Hillje and Jochen Sandig. She opened the Schaubühne under new direction with the debut of Körper (2000). This was followed by S (2000), noBody (2002), insideout (2003), Impromptus (2004) and Gezeiten (2005).

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