Raised in the rural fields of Northern Greece, on Dionysian land, where gymnastics, nature, community, and the wide horizon shaped the foundation of my embodied experience.
The BA in Geography and Social Sciences from the University of the Aegean provided a lens for studying the interconnected map of space, humans, environment, and culture. During an exchange program in Wageningen, Netherlands, I was introduced to somatic dance and improvisation, where the body and experiential anatomy became a new territory to map sensation, imagination, and movement. Is where Improvisation dance became the place where expression and essence found a place within me.
Later, graduated from TIP – School for Contemporary Dance and Improvisation in Germany and followed a path of performing and teaching, specializing in somatic practices and instant composition where contact improvisation and improvisation was central to my interests and practice. My somatic background — grounded in over thirteen years of research into experiential anatomy, body-mind methodologies, and movement improvisation — continues to inform both my choreographic language and artistic research.
As a dancer, I was actively creating and performing within the freelance scene in Germany, with steady collaborations with Laura Heinecke Productions (Potsdam, Freiburg).
Working with Maya Carroll was significant to my artistic development and deepened my understanding of choreographic work.
As a choreographer, I have created several projects funded by the cities of Freiburg and Kassel. My main evolution unfolded through the trilogy — Rock Water Spell (2020), Silken Veil (2022), and Water Our Future (2023) — developed in Kassel with the collective ROH, which I founded and direct artistically. Our work has been supported by the State of Kassel and local municipalities.
As an artistic researcher, I received funding from Berlin’s DISTANZ and #TakeCare programs, through which I developed a toolbox approach for choreographic and somatic practice — a methodological bridge between embodied experience and creative action. A milestone in this research became the development of Kinesthetic Intelligence, a sensorial mapping of perception, presence, and somatic awareness through movement.
Other projects that remain is Let me see you seeing me, 1:1 performance of 15 min where performer is there for 1 person at a time, improvising the immaterial becoming material and the film --why don-t you hold me -- with SIderis Nanoudis that was selected in Dance Days Chania 2020.
Currently, my interest lies in creating educational and artistic frameworks that bring community together through dance, art and environment..
photo: Jennifer Rohbahr_tanznetzfreiburg
