Factory Artists

Choreographer and performer Reut Shemesh lives and works in Cologne. She received her education at ArtEZ in Arnhem and followed up with her post-graduate studies at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. In her works The Virgin’s Voice, ATARA, WITNESS, COBRA BLONDE and LEVIAH she deals with crosslinks between visible self-portrayals of femininity and imagined ascriptions, both from within and without. 
A performance of LEVIAH marked the beginning of an intense collaboration between Reut Shemesh and tanzhaus nrw, which resulted in an invitation to become a Factory Artist in 2020. The piece, which explores the physical as well as emotional effects of military service in Israel on female bodies, will now be performed again as part of the Factory Finale at tanzhaus nrw. 

Reut Shemesh, distinguished as one of 2019’s hopes by trade magazine “tanz”, received several invitations, among those one to biannual “Tanzplattform Deutschland” (German Dance Platform) with her work ATARA, co-produced by tanzhaus nrw, in March, 2020. On the occasion of the invitation to Munich, journalist Melanie Suchy / “tanz”  wrote a portrait titled “Frauen in Uniform (Women in Uniform)”, very much worth reading, about Reut Shemesh’s artistic work.

Alfredo Zinola devises dance performances for a young audience with a rotating cast of different artists*. The audience receives its first tasks already during the creative process while asked to accompany initial drafts and rehearsals. In this close collaboration, Alfredo Zinola channels his artistic research into surprising as well as touching imagery and materiality, as can be seen, for example, in PARTY, where the adults become sidelined while the children celebrate, and in PELLE, co-produced by tanzhaus nrw, a piece he dedicated to the skin, its intimacy and vulnerability. Also in 200 ways, an intense connection is created between Alfredo Zinola and his audience. In this playful performance, even the slightest finger movement may tell so much. A new movement virtuosity arises thus: Instead of tricks and jumps, simple, mundane gestures serve to generate an encounter between performer and the members of the audience. The piece can be seen as part of this year's Factory Finale.

Alfredo Zinola grew up in close proximity to theatre and arrived at dance by way of guidance received by Italian choreographer Raffaella Giordano. He completed his dance studies at the Folkwang University of the Arts and graduated in intercultural communication and the training course “Kuratieren in den Szenischen Künsten (Curating in the Scenic Arts)” at Salzburg University. He received a basic grant from the city of Munich until 2021.

nutrospektif are Bahar Gökten, Daniela Mba, Daniela Rodriguez Romero, Friederike Frost and Yeliz Pazar. The collective, founded in 2012 at tanzhaus nrw is dedicated to the examination of movement principles as well as to the cultural practice of urban dance cultures, among them hip hop, breaking, Popping, Locking or Waacking, transferring them into a contemporary, performative and theatrical context.

The dance artists* aim to provide urban dance with more visibility, from an artistic standpoint and from different perspectives, making it accessible for an outside experience. 2021 arose stage plays as part of STEP BY STEP, the Factory Artist's cooperation with the Ballett am Rhein, improvisational formats such as, most currently, moment(urb)an and IM FLAME – Flamenco meets urban dance , Urban Residencies, and most recently the MOVING CONCRETE for Urban Dance Art festival in September. This year, for Factory Finale, the collective celebrates its tenth anniversary with NUTRO 10 – eine nutrospective that offers audiences a reflexive and moving portrait inspired by the collective's history. 

The interdisciplinary exchange is mirrored by several collaborations with a number of cultural and educational institutions, such as the Oper am Rhein, Museum für Angewandte Kunst (Museum of Applied Art/ MAKK) Cologne, Oper und Schauspiel (Opera and Theatre) Cologne, the Institute of Dance and Movement Culture at the German Sport University Cologne and Pottporus e.V. as well in their recurring co-operations with MichaelDouglas Kollektiv and ZAIK. 

Claire Cunningham is an interdisciplinary artist and performer, currently living and working out of Glasgow, Scotland. Her work is informed by her physicalness and her crutches with which she creates her own action radius by expanding their use and original purpose. While rejecting classically connotated movement techniques that have been devised almost exclusively for non-disabled bodies as well as attempts for orientation towards styles or bodies that are not her own, Claire Cunningham develops a special movement technique with her crutches. In this, she views her art, decidedly originating from her perspective as an artist with disability, always as activism, too.

With the site-specific, adapted Düsseldorf restaging of her project Guide Gods, she negotiated the perspective on disability by different religious teachings again in 2018. In autumn of 2019, she followed this with her new production Thank you very much in which she directs the gaze, along with three more performers, onto moments in which humans slip into the bodies of other humans and movements skip their context. Claire Cunningham provided significant impulse to tanzhaus nrw as an institution geared towards inclusion.
In addition to the publication series The Choreography of Care (2021-2022), Claire Cunningham explores in the symposium of the same name during the Factory Finale the significance of the concept of care, the care for oneself and others, both in her work and in the work of esteemed colleagues and artists.

As a choreographer and performer, Ligia Lewis devises works that make the diverse social and historic inscriptions into the body palpable in all their complexity in an affective, empathetic and sensory manner. She does not only challenge presentation and narrative forms with this, she also constantly puts the theatre as context into focus. She won the Prix Jardin d’Europe for her choreography Sorrow Swag, and minor matter was distinguished with the 2017 “Bessie Award” as well as with the “Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award” while also receiving an invitation to Tanzplattform Deutschland 2018 in Essen. 

In summer 2021, VOLUME UP, the festival for unheard stories and disregarded knowledge took place in collaboration between Ligia Lewis and the tanzhaus nrw. Ligia Lewis concluded her trilogy BLUE RED WHITE with Water Will (in Melody), co-produced by tanzhaus nrw and HAU Hebbel am Ufer in 2018. This delicately spun choreography for three dancers takes melodrama as its starting point. Wrestling with the language and the concept of “will”, this dystopian fantasy creates a space in which desire, imagination, and the feeling of a nearing end are negotiated.