Anna Hein, born in Graz and raised in Carinthia and Vienna, is a multi-award-winning international dancer and choreographer. She is the artistic director of the Long Night of Dance at the CCB – Choreographic Centre Bleiburg/Pliberk. Since 2013, she has been organising the successful annual format, which takes place in various cities in the Alps-Adriatic tri-border region of Austria-Slovenia-Italy. She also supports the BMKÖS in the responsible decisions as an arts advisor for the performing arts.
She trained in classical ballet at the Vienna State Opera and gained contemporary dance experience at danceWEB/ImPulsTanz in Vienna (with Jorma Uotinen and Ismael Ivo, among others), the Venice Biennale (with Carolyn Carlson, Josef Nagy and Wim Vandekeybus, among others) and the Trisha Brown Company in New York. In 1998, she took on her first engagement at the Innsbruck State Theatre. After winning the Tyrolean State Theatre and Carinthian State Prize for Performing Arts, she was named Young Dancer of the Year in the dance magazine balletttanz international. From 2004, she was a member of the Belgian company Charleroi Danses, where she worked as a creative dancer in Frédéric Flamand's globally successful dance/architecture series body-city with the architects Zaha Hadid and Thom Mayne, among others. Guest appearances in theatre and festival productions at home and abroad followed. She danced for renowned choreographers such as Elio Gervasi, Johann Kresnik, Jochen Ulrich, Mei Hong Lin, Jean Renshaw, Eric Trottier and many more, and always loved being a dancer at SiWiC in Zurich under the direction of Nigel Charnock and Susanne Linke – an exciting international Swiss training programme for young choreographers. During a lengthy work-related knee injury, her focus increasingly shifted to creating her own choreographies, dance projects for children and young people and teaching classical ballet, contemporary dance, Peak Pilates and movement training for actors.
She created her first choreographic commissions for Tanzherbst Feldkirch, Swarovski Kristallwelten, Tolentini-Kreuzgang-Venedig, MMKK Klagenfurt and neuebuenevillach, among others. She increasingly swapped the conventional stage for other spaces and favoured open-air experiments. She created further choreographies such as blanche, inspired by Per Olov Enquist's view of the figure Marie Curie, der turm, a staging of the historic diving tower in Millstatt, die Schwimmerin in co-operation with Josef Winkler, hidden senses with the Danish band Afenginn, aufgestrichen und getanzt with the music band Aufstrich as part of the Carinthian Summer Music Festival. She deliberately created all of these pieces with live musicians, who were usually closely integrated into the stage action.
Anna Hein also found interest in collaborations with theatre directors: she created further choreographies for Prezihs Traum with Bernd Liepold-Mosser, BeingElse with Rachelle Nkou, Lebenmüssen with Johann Kresnik, Beet.Symph.Fünf with Ernst Kurt Weigel and the memorial project and now by Peter Wagner/Clemens Berger, among others.
Her own choreographic interest is currently dance and music-dance-video productions in co-operation with the Finnish-Swedish composer Kim Nyberg/Afenginn. In addition to her dance and choreographic career, Anna has always had a great passion for sharing the joy of dance by teaching dance workshops in different dance styles – depending on the needs and level of the participants.
22.04.2024
