Contemporary Dance

Open Class with Erika Winkler

NEW! Online Open Class

We are offering Open Classes again: Every Saturday at 16:00 online via Zoom with changing instructors from the dance styles ballet, jazz dance and contemporary. So you can get a taste and book a single class for 8€ each.

On February 6.: Contemporary Dance with Erika Winkler.

Cologne choreographer, dancer and teacher Erika Winkler works with principles devoted to physical perception. Through a multitude of tasks, she sends the body on a quest for new and unusual paths. She has been intensively occupied with, among other things, “thinking” physical work that sharpens self-perception in improvisation, thus schooling the skill for the repetition of learned movement patterns. Apart from this, Erika also imparts William Forsythe’s “improvisation technologies” in her classes. In this context, Rudolf von Lábán’s spatial context and nine-point-improvisation also come up. The training consists of a warm-up and longer movement sequences. Erika then deals with the materials flexibly and hands out short research tasks in order to explore movement processes. This concentrates mainly on a differentiated perception of the body (along with a perception of the body centre), forms of isolating the body parts and positioning in relation to the inner and outer spaces. Apart from this, floorwork and off-balance exercises as well as coordination and flexibility are also in focus. Erika is an esteemed and popular artist whose classes for professional dancers and dance students, alongside her other activities, are complete successes.

Portrait Erika Winkler

Erika Winkler

Erika Winkler received her dance education at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen and, following her graduation, worked at a number of theatres and in freelance companies, with an engagement of several years with Dutch Company RAZ. She developed projects for Ruhr.2010 and is a regular choreographer for Team Plöger/Winkler/Becker at the FFT Düsseldorf. She teaches workshops internationally and has been an esteemed and popular teacher at tanzhaus nrw since 1998. Here, as well as at PACT Zollverein and for companies like Ultima Vez, Neuer Tanz or Random Dance, she offers regular professional training, too.