Merce Cunningham (April 16, 1919-July 26, 2009) is widely considered to be one of the most important choreographers of all time. His approach to performance was groundbreaking in its ideological simplicity and physical complexity: he applied the idea that “a thing is just that thing” to choreography, embracing the notion that “if the dancer dances, everything is there.”

Cunningham was born in Centralia, Washington, and attended the Cornish School in Seattle. There, he was introduced to the work of Martha Graham (he would later have a six-year tenure as a soloist with her company) and met John Cage, who would become the greatest influence on his practice, his closest collaborator, and his life partner until Cage’s death in 1992. In 1948, Cunningham and Cage began a relationship with the famed experimental institution Black Mountain College, where Cunningham first formed a dance company to explore his convention-breaking ideas. The Merce Cunningham Dance Company (originally called Merce Cunningham and Dance Company) would remain in continuous operation until 2011, with Cunningham as Artistic Director until his death in 2009. Over the course of his career, Cunningham choreographed 180 dances and over 700 Events.

Across his 70-year career, Cunningham proposed a number of radical innovations to how movement and choreography are understood, and sought to find new ways to integrate technology and dance. With long-term collaborations with artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Charles Atlas, and Elliot Caplan, Cunningham’s sphere of influence also extended deep into the visual arts world.

Cunningham earned some of the highest honors bestowed in the arts, and his dances have been performed by groups including the Paris Opera Ballet, New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, White Oak Dance Project, the Lyon Opera Ballet, Ballett am Rhein, and Londons Rambert Dance Company.

Through the Merce Cunningham Trust, his vision lives on, regenerated time and time again through new bodies and minds.

Martha Graham (1894–1991) was one of the most influential dancers, choreographers, and dance educators of the 20th century. Her artistic approach is considered groundbreaking for the development of modern dance. Her legacy includes more than 180 ballets and the creation of the Graham technique, which revolutionized the world of dance.

Breaking away from classical ballet, the Graham technique is based on the principles of contraction and release. Graham developed a movement vocabulary in which the body becomes a medium for expressing intense emotions. Her choreographies reveal the depth of human feeling through sharp, angular, and direct movements. She frequently thematized mythological and historical figures in her works, as well as personal experiences, in which she often staged herself.

Graham collaborated with leading artists of her time, including composers Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti. Her influence extended beyond dance into various areas of theater, such as lighting, costume design and music. Graham inspired generations of choreographers that included Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, and Twyla Tharp.

1998 Martha Graham was named “Dancer of the Century” by TIME magazine. At the Martha Graham Dance Company, which she founded in New York City in 1926, her technique continues to be studied. Her approach to dance and theater revolutionized the art form and her innovative physical vocabulary has irrevocably influenced dance worldwide.

The Berlin- and Helsinki-based Finnish choreographer Milla Koistinen holds an MA in Dance from the Theatre Academy in Helsinki and an MA in Choreography from HZT Berlin. Koistinen’s works have been presented at venues and festivals such as Radialsystem, Dance House Helsinki, Tanzhaus NRW, & Espoo, Szene Salzburg, Fabriktheater Zürich, Dampfzentrale Bern, Tanz im August, SPRING Performing Arts Festival, Moving in November and Faerderbiennalen.

Koistinen has collaborated with musicians and theatre directors including Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop, Jochen Arbeit and Michael Rauter, as well as with directors at the Finnish National Theatre. In the summer of 2010, she was awarded a danceWEB scholarship at Impulstanz Vienna.

In addition to her artistic work, Koistinen teaches contemporary technique, composition, and choreography in various companies, institutions, and educational programs. She has been a guest teacher at institutions such as the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance (SEAD), the Iceland Academy of the Arts, Tanzhaus NRW, Sasha Waltz & Guests, the Theatre Academy of Helsinki, Carte Blanche, Unusual Symptoms and HZT Berlin. In the spring of 2019, she was invited to lecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.

In 2020–2024 Milla Koistinen’s work was supported by apap – FEMINIST FUTURES – a project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

In 2025–2027 Koistinen is working with the support of Arts Promotion Centre Finland.

Daniel Linehan first studied dance in Seattle and then moved to New York in 2004. As a performer, Linehan worked with Miguel Gutierrez and Big Art Group, among other artists. His own choreographic work first came to public attention in 2004 with the solo Digested Noise, presented in Fresh Tracks at Dance Theater Workshop. In 2005 and 2006, he worked with a team of four other dancers to create The Sun Came and Human Content Pile. Linehan was a 2007-2008 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence. In 2007, he premiered the solo Not About Everything, which has since been presented in over 75 venues internationally.

In 2008, Linehan moved to Brussels where he completed the Research Cycle at P.A.R.T.S. in 2010. His works created in Belgium include Montage for Three (2009), Being Together without any Voice (2010), Zombie Aporia (2011), Gaze is a Gap is a Ghost (2012), Doing While Doing (2012), The Karaoke Dialogues (2014), Un Sacre du Printemps (2015), dbddbb (2015), Flood (2017), Third Space (2018), Body of Work (2019), sspeciess (2020), and Listen Here: These Woods (2021) and Listen Here: This Cavern (2022).

Linehan also developed Vita Activa (2013), a participatory project for 40 unemployed people culminating in a final public performance, co-directed with Michael Helland. In the same year he created, in collaboration with graphic designer Gerard Leysen, the book A No Can Make Space which gathers and organizes the traces of Linehan’s ten years of choreographic practice. Linehan is regularly invited as a guest teacher and mentor at dance institutions worldwide.

Jan Martens, born in 1984, studied dance at the Royal Conservatoire of Dance at Artesis Hogeschool in Antwerp and at the Fontys Dance Academy in Tilburg.

He has performed with Mor Shani, Tuur Marinus, Ann Van den Broek and others. Since 2009 Jan Martens has been creating his own pieces, focusing on contemporary social topics with humor and a talent for gentle controversy, including Sweat Baby Sweat (2011), Victor (2013), The dog days are over (2014) and The common people (2016). He has been hosted in this capacity by Frascati, ICKamsterdam, CAMPO and DansBrabant.

In 2014, together with business leader Klaartje Oerlemans, he founded the production platform GRIP in Antwerp/Rotterdam to organise and distribute his work. From September 2014 to June 2016, Martens was artist-in-residence at tanzhaus nrw in Düsseldorf. From the summer of 2016 to the summer of 2018, he will be Artist Associé at the CDC Le Gymnase in Roubaix, Nord-Pas de Calais, and he will be Creative Associate at deSingel International Arts Campus in Antwerp until 2021.

Mathilde Monnier is a role model in French and international contemporary dance’s landscape. From piece to piece she defies expectations by presenting a work in constant renewal . Her nomination at the head of the Choreographic Centre of Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon in 1994 marks the beginning of a series of collaborations with personalities from various artistic fields (Jean-Luc Nancy, Katerine, Christine Angot, La Ribot, Heiner Goebbels…).

She created more than 40 choreographic works presented on the great stages of the Avignon festival, the biggest theaters of Paris, New York, Vienna, Berlin, London… and received several awards for her work: The French Ministry of Culture prize, the SACD Grand Prix. She was designated in 2014 to take the general direction of the National Dance Centre in Pantin until june 2019.