Reinhild Hoffmann

Reinhild Hoffmann (born November 1, 1943 in Sorau ) is a German dancer and choreographer who is one of the pioneers of dance theater .

Early years

Reinhild Hoffmann came to southern Germany as a small child and attended a ballet school in Karlsruhe. From 1965 to 1970 she studied “contemporary dance” at the Folkwang School in Essen and graduated with a dance teacher exam. Then she worked as a dancer with Kurt Jooss and Johann Kresnik .

From 1975 to 1977 she ran the Folkwang dance studio together with Susanne Linke . She designed her first choreography trio , which earned her a two-year choreography scholarship at the school. During this time duets , solo , fin al punto and rouge et noir were created .

In 1977 she choreographed her famous solo with sofa , in which the oversized train of the dress ties the dancer to a sofa, to the music of John Cage . Two years later, she creates stones , boards and pieces , which she puts together for a solo evening with Solo with a sofa . Hoffmann danced this solo program until 1984. In 1978, thanks to a grant from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, she spent half a year in New York.

Dance theater in Bremen

In the autumn of 1978 she was engaged as director of the Bremen dance theater together with Gerhard Bohner . In Bremen all of her creative possibilities unfolded in one fell swoop. Her first play was called Five Days, Five Nights and was performed in a relatively narrow, narrow room, the former Concordia cinema . Reinhild Hoffmann used these rooms again and again for the Bremen dance theater.

Wedding was her next dance piece, which covered the entire subject of courtship, wedding, wedding night, marriage, pregnancy, in all moods, from humor to deep seriousness. In 1980, Unkrautgarten followed through family neuroses, expectation and Pierrot Lunaire to music by Arnold Schönberg and Kings and Queens , a piece that received an invitation to the Berlin Theatertreffen . Gerhard Bohner's contract in Bremen was not extended in 1981 and Reinhild Hoffmann was now solely responsible for the dance division.

In 1983 she choreographed Callas , who dealt with the world of theater show. In 1984 Dido and Aeneas followed . These works are counted among their most successful. In 1985 she brought Föhn to the stage, in 1986 she traveled , with which Reinhild Hoffmann and her ensemble said goodbye to the Bremen stage.

Schauspielhaus Bochum

Her next engagement took place at the Schauspielhaus Bochum , which was a novelty for a dance company. Her first play there was Machandl , an attempt at telling fairy tales, which was more committed to theater than dance theater. Other Bochum pieces were Von ein Who Moved Out ... , Horatier after Heiner Müller , I donate my heart and the joint production Hof . She understood working at the theater as an attempt to bring acting and dance closer together.

Free work

From 1995 Hoffmann's Bochum company could no longer be financed by public funds and had to be dissolved. Since then, the artist , who now lives in Berlin, has been working as a freelance choreographer and opera director. In 2003 she directed Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss and in 2005, together with Isabel Mundry, Das Mädchen aus der Fremde at the Mannheim National Theater . In October 2008, Richard Strauss' opera Salome followed at the Aachen Theater under the musical direction of Marcus R. Bosch .

Awards

Reinhild Hoffmann received the German Critics' Prize in 1982 and the Federal Cross of Merit, First Class, in 1992 . In 1997 she was elected a member of the Berlin Academy of the Arts . In 2007 she took over the vice-chairmanship of the performing arts section.

Web links

• Reinhild Hoffmann Archive in the Archive of the Academy of Arts, Berlin

supporting documents

1. ↑ Since 2007 deputy director of the AdK performing arts section