With a background nurtured on the one hand by the teaching of some of the greatest masters of the German school, on the other by having been part of Mark Morris' Dance Group for several years, the German Joachim Schlömer, born in 1962, is a new author who already has significant choreographic and company management experience behind him. The training of this young artist originally from Mannheim took place at the Folkwanghochschule in Essen. Here Schlömer studied from ancient dance to flamenco, from classical to modern dance composition techniques, attending the classes of Hans Zullig, Jean Cébron, Malou Airaudo. From 1988 to 1991 he danced at the Théâtre de la Mannaie in Brussels with Mark Morris, simultaneously founding his first group in 1990, the Josch company. With this formation he toured throughout Europe, presenting the creations, Der Tod und das Mädchen, Stranger that Picnic, Shoulder to Shoulder. His first engagement as director of a dance company linked to a theater dates back to 1991, the year in which he was called to head the Ballet of the Theater of Ulm, in Germany. It was in this context that Schlömer began to deepen his reflection on the relationship between music and choreography, signing creations on scores by John Cage, Altfred Schnittke, Iannis Xenakis, Franz Schubert. Prolific and punctual in his approach to dance and composition, Schlömer danced as a guest in Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring – an experience that marked him deeply and after which he declared that he would never choreograph that score by Stravinsky – but he was invited by Mikhail Baryshnikov to sign three creations for the White Oak Dance Project, Behind White Lilies (1993) and Blue Heron (1994), both also seen in Italy, and Still Nacht (1996). In 1994 he took on a new and stimulating commitment: the direction of the new dance theatre section of the Weimar National Theatre. He currently lives in Switzerland, where since 1996 he has directed the dance theatre group of the Basel Theatre. Among his latest works, the staging and choreography of Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice; the collaboration at the prestigious Salzburg Festival with a master of opera direction such as Peter Sellars for Lieti’s Le Grand Macabre; the successful new version of Petrouchka, presented with Yorgos Loukos’ Ballet National de Lyon together with the Concerto for piano and wind instruments, also by Stravinsky. Not an insignificant curriculum for a choreographer who has not yet reached the age of forty: Schlömer, after all, stands out from many authors of his age, for a marked passion and musical culture that allows him a rigorous compositional approach, of which the Stravinsky Evening mounted last June in Lyon is a clear example. At the same time, Schlömer loves to carve out areas in his narrative that are rich in fantasy and anxiety, thanks to which his formally impeccable dance is characterised by an underground and rarely obvious expressiveness. Hochland oder der Nachhall der Steine, a creation signed for Weimar in 1995, responds to the alchemy described above, taking shape visually in a show judged in Germany as a sort of fascinating and mysterious travel journal.
