Michael Loehr
Michael Loehr studied contemporary dance at the cologne university of music and dance and subsequently received a scholarship to visit the annual summer academy in kyoto, japan. he worked with tanztheater bielefeld and tanzcompagnie oldenburg where he danced in pieces by rami be’er, shlomi bitton, ingun bjørnsgaard, lionel hoche, jan pusch, jo strømgren, guy weizman & roni haver and gregor zoellig.
in 2009 michael moved to berlin in order to start working as a freelance dancer, choreographer and teacher. next to creating his own work and his involvement in the choreographic collective ‚something machine‘, he has been collaborating with ahn eun-me company, alessandra corti, clint lutes, emanuel gat dance, unterwegstheater heidelberg and has performed at numerous dance festivals around the world.
michael is regularly invited to give company training and to teach open contemporary classes or workshops for professionals as well as non-professionals. in addition, he has been working on numerous projects as choreographic assistant of amala dianor and emanuel gat.
his work as a teacher and rehearsal director has led him to collaborate with institutions such as ballet de lorraine, ballet national de marseille, budapest dance theatre, candoco dance company, cedar lake contemporary ballet, jin xing dance theatre, landestheater linz, montpellier danse, polish national ballet, potsdamer tanztage, prix de lausanne, tanz im august, tanzfabrik berlin, tanzhaus nrw, tanzlabor 21, tanzprobebuehne marameo and va woelfl’s neuer tanz.
Class description
my class develops from plain and pure body-work / work-out exercises, through short floor- and standing combinations into more complex choreographic sequences. some of the basic principles which are constantly worked with are: finding, strengthening and shifting the center, being on and off balance, resting and exploding into space, moving expansively and taking risks. the class is very physical, energetic and athletic but it also focuses on increasing the physical awareness in order to work within a frame in which one can push his individual limits but keep the body safe.
it‘s an essential part of the class to discover and make full use of the logic that underlies every movement phrase. based on that understanding i want to encourage the participants to take their own decisions, so they can find their own way of playing with quality, musicality and dynamics and strengthen their individual expression as a performer.