Greetings

Bundeswettbewerb 9. Biennale Tanzausbildung 2024 München 

Dance education is currently undergoing profound changes. Worldwide existing principles and role models are being rethought and scrutinised. This requires exchange and encounters. Here, the Biennale Tanzausbildung is one of the most important forums, as it brings together professional dance education institutions in Germany. It is an honour for us to host this central dance education event this year and to welcome guests from Germany and all over the world to Munich. More than 100 students and teachers will spend a week artistically and discursively exploring the highly relevant topic of “Ideals and Role Models”. Choreographies, workshops, training sessions and a symposium will provide a place for encounters with ‘the Other’ – as a reflection in aesthetic and ethical contexts. I am particularly pleased that the 9th Biennale Tanzausbildung 2024 München will bring the entire international spectrum of dance – and not just European dance – from classical to contemporary and up to hip-hop onto the stage and into the spotlight. 

I would like to thank the director of our ballet academy, Prof. Jan Broeckx, and his team around Anna Beke and David Russo as well as Simone Geiger Liebreich and Isabelle Severs for their successful organisational work, our partners for their excellent cooperation and our sponsors – in particular the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Department of Arts and Culture of the City of Munich – for their extensive support. 

I wish all contributors and participants inspiring encounters and a productive, creative exchange! 

Prof. Lydia Grün 
President of the University of Music and Theatre Munich

Ideals and role models 

Ideals and role models – this is the motto of this year‘s 9th Biennale Tanzausbildung at the Ballet Academy of the University of Music and Theatre Munich. I think it‘s a good and interesting motto. Especially in today‘s times. Ideals are orientated towards perfection, they are something we strive for but perhaps never achieve. Role models, on the other hand, are more down-to-earth. They provide orientation, we can learn from them, and we can develop along the lines of role models. It is in this area of tension that the energy for something new arises and thus also the prerequisite for art. 

You will come together in Munich for a week to work together under the motto “Ideals and Role Models. Best Practice in Dance“ to work together, reflect and discuss, thus illuminating the future of dance education and professional dance. 

With the Biennale Tanzausbildung, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research promotes young dance talent. The aim is to provide a forum for performances under professional conditions. At the same time, a space for discussion is created in order to deal with different (training) cultures. It is about the quality of training for a profession that is subject to constant change. In dance, the rational and the emotional intermingle, without there being any guarantee whatsoever of artistic success. 

I wish all participants of the 9th Biennale Tanzausbildung Bundeswettbewerb a week with many new insights, interesting discussions and fresh impulses for their education. 

Dr. Johanna Börsch-Supan 
Head of Directorate-General “General Education and Vocational Training; Lifelong Learning”, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research

Dear choreographers and dancers, 

In 2024, the Biennale Tanzausbildung will take place in Munich, hosted by the Ballet Academy of the University of Music and Theatre. I am delighted that students from all dance academies in Germany will join together for one week in the capital city of Bavaria as a place of encounter. 

They will come together here, experience different training cultures and become acquainted with newest developments in dance-education. What aesthetical and ethical ideals serve today’s dancers as role-models? Which dance-techniques and working-methods offer potential for creative processes and themes in contemporary-dance? And what role does diversity play in today’s dance-scene? These questions will be discussed with international renowned guests such as Alexei Ratmansky, Germaine Acogny, Julie Shanahan, Simone Sandroni, Craig Davidson, Eisa Jocson, among others. I wish all participants a week full of stimulating encounters, interesting discussions and fresh impulses for training and performance. 

I congratulate those who have chosen dance as a profession. Dance is something truly extraordinary – it generates movement of body, mind and soul. Thank you for inspiring us with your ideas and your skills in dance! 

Anton Biebl 
Head of Department of Arts and Culture of the City of Munich

Ideals and Role Models. 
Best Practice in Dance 

Many political uncertainties and profound challenges currently preoccupy our world, both nationally and internationally and dance is not except this reality, just like the world of art and culture itself. Therefore, the significance of gathering and exchanging ideas with people from various countries and cultures across four continents for the 9th edition of the Biennale Tanzausbildung becomes even more meaningful. Our common bond is the love and passion for dance—a language that transcends words and is immediately and universally understood. 

As the focal point of this year’s Biennale, we’ve selected a theme as timeless as dance itself: the question of ideals in dance, both ethically and aesthetically. Under the title Ideals and Role models. Best Practice in Dance, we aim to scrutinize and reflect upon the meaning of traditional ideals and role models in the professional dance sector on the one hand, and how much they have embraced diversity and equality on the other — two concepts currently on everyone’s lips. Through the 9th Biennale Tanzausbildung 2024 in Munich, we encourage all participants to seek fresh insights into ideals, pose questions, engage in collective reflection, and position themselves within this specific context. 

In alignment with this year’s theme, we have curated a program of workshops and classes offering students access to the most innovative and diverse positions in contemporary dance spanning the past thirty years to the present, emerging from dance theatre, martial arts, communicative dance form, abstract and (neo)-classical positions. The students and audience alike will have the possibility to engage with both emerging talents from the independent dance-scene, such as Eisa Jocson, Craig Davidson, and Ami Shulman, and groundbreaking artists whose aesthetics have influenced generations of young choreographers: Among them are Germaine Acogny from Senegal, the pioneer who introduced contemporary African dance to European audiences, Julie Shanahan from Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Simone Sandroni, co-founder of Ultima Vez (alongside Wim Vandekeybus), and the world renowned choreographer Alexei Ratmansky – today artist in residence at the New York City Ballet. 

We would like to thank those responsible at the Europäische Theaterakademie GmbH “Konrad Ekhof” Hamburg as well as our artistic advisor Bettina Wagner-Bergelt for their intensive and valuable support. Last but not least – we eagerly anticipate exciting new impulses from and with you, and we are proud to host this significant event for the first time in this year’s edition. Munich awaits you, and so do we! 

Jan Broeckx, David Russo, Anna Beke, Simone Geiger Liebreich and Isabelle Severs 
Curatorial team of 9th Biennale Tanzausbildung 2024 München / Ballet Academy, HMTM