Lucinda Childs began her career as choreographer and performer in 1963 as an original member of the Judson Dance Theater in New York.

After forming her own dance company in 1973, Childs collaborated with Robert Wilson and Philip Glass on the opera Einstein on the Beach in 1976, participating as principal performer and solo choreographer for which she received an Obie award. Childs has appeared in five of Wilson’s major productions. Beginning in 1979, Childs collaborated with a number of composers and designers on a series of large-scale productions.

The first of these was Dance, choreographed in 1979 with music by Philip Glass, and a film/decor by Sol LeWitt. It continues to tour extensively in the United States and Europe and was cited by the Wall Street Journal (2011) as “one of the greatest achievements of the 20th century.” Since 1981, Childs has received a number of commissions from major ballet companies and has choreographed and directed several opera productions including: Gluck’s Orfeo et Euridice for the Los Angeles Opera, Mozart’s Zaide for La Monnaie in Brussels and a new production of John Adams’s Dr Atomic for the Opera du Rhin in 2014.

Childs received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1979.  She is also the recipient of the NEA/NEFA American Masterpiece Award, and in 2004 was elevated from Officer to Commander of France’s Order of Arts and Letters.  In 2017 she received the Samuel H. Scripps award for lifetime achievement at the American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina, as well as the Venice Biennale de la Danse Golden Lion Award.

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.

Noa Eshkol Eshkol (1924 – 2007) was a choreographer, dance pedagogue, and textile artist. Together with Avraham Wachman, she developed the Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation System and collaborated across disciplines with artists and scientists. Her approach to dance was marked by a focus on the essential: by recognizing each movement and every part of the body in its full autonomy and complexity, she opened a vast space for creative diversity in choreographic composition. Her work continues to influence contemporary choreographic and performative practices to this day.

Jesús Rubio Gamo (Madrid, 1982) is an independent dancer and choreographer based in Madrid. After studying ballet, contemporary dance, theatre and literature, Jesús was awarded with a MAE-AECI grant to develop dance studies in a foreign country. He moved to London where he completed an MA in choreography at London Contemporary Dance School (Distinction). He has also studied an MA in Performative Studies at Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. His work has been presented at National and International Festivals such as Chantiers d’Europe (Théâtre de la VilleParis), Dancenet Sweeden, Festival de Otoño (Madrid), The Greenwich and Docklands International Festival (London), FAEL (Lima), Les Plateaux (La Briquetterie-Paris), Birmingham International Dance Festival, ARC for Dance (Athens), International Theatre Amsterdam, Hay Festival or Romaeuropa Festival.

Jesús was selected two years in a row (2017 and 2018) by the Platform Aerowaves as one of the most relevant 20 young choreographers in Europe. In 2020 the Spanish National Radio awarded him with the Prize OJO CRÍTICO in dance. The jury highlighted “his artisanal approach to dance composition shown in intimate projects as well as in the orchestration of big ensembles in which he manages to balance the choreographic structure with the individuality of his performers.”

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.

Rabih Mroué is a Berlin-based artist, actor and director who has caused a furore in visual art, in theatre and on the performance scene. The subject of his work is the ‘present reality’ that surrounds him, which he processes for the stage using fictitious and real – often everyday – materials, and using documents, photographs, videos and objects as his starting point. He is a co-founder and member of the executive board of the Beirut Art Center, co-publisher of TDR: The Drama Review (NYC) as well as director of the Munich Kammerspiele. From 2012–15, he was a fellow of the International Research Center ‘Interweaving Performance Cultures’ in Berlin.

His current stage works include Ode to Joy (2015) and Riding on a cloud (2013) as well as 33 RPM and a Few Seconds (2012) with Lina Majdalanie. His most recent exhibitions have included MOMA 2015, Mesnta Gallerija (Ljubljana, 2014), SALT (Istanbul, 2014), CA2M (Madrid, 2013) and DOCUMENTA 13 (Kassel, 2012).

A showcase of the artist’s most important works – entitled Outside the Image Inside Us (in partnership with Lina Majdalanie) – can be seen at HAU Hebbel am Ufer from
30 March to 4 April 2016.