True to its motto: ‘demonstrating versatility in dealing with various dance styles and topics and developing an individual signature style in the process’, the ballet ensemble of the Schleswig-Holsteinisches Landestheater, under the leadership of ballet director and choreographer Katharina Torwesten, covers the full spectrum of dance. Its work ranges from classical ballets such as Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” to children’s ballets such as “The Town Musicians of Bremen” with a mix of music featuring everything from classical to hip-hop, as well as fully original dance theatre evenings on various subjects. Such a wide range of work requires a specific artistic profile in the dancers. On the one hand, they must be able to handle both classical and modern movement vocabulary in order to lend their stage characters as differentiated a performance as possible. On the other hand, intellectual and emotional skills are also required: “In the shared development and elaboration of a role, there are always moments, in which we read, reflect, philosophise, doubt, decide. The dancers need to be ready for this process, for the core of our artistic work is to then translate this to a physical level”, says Katharina Torwesten. 

On the ensemble´s history

At the beginning of the 2010/11 season, ballet director and choreographer Katharina Torwesten very quickly formed a new ballet ensemble at the Schleswig-Holsteinischen Landestheater and choreographed ‘tailor-made’ expressive roles to suit the individual personalities of the dancers in “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame“, “Max and Moritz” and “Born to be wild”. After a production of “Romeo and Juliet”, followed by a tango evening, the ensemble delighted audiences with Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker”, the children’s ballet “The Town Musicians of Bremen”, “The Carmen Myth”, Prokofiev’s “Cinderella” and “M” based on the classic film by Fritz Lang. Performances planned for the 2014/15 season include the romantic ballet “Giselle” and the audio tape concert “Piaf”.

Katharina Torwesten

Katharina Torwesten was born in Münster (Germany) and began learning violin and piano at an early age. In Hanover (Germany), she studied classical dance and also completed her training as a dance pedagogue. Subsequently, she had various engagements as a dancer at a number of German theatres such as Bremerhaven, Münster and Bautzen. At the same time, she was increasingly in demand as a guest choreographer for operas, operetta, musicals and plays and worked as an independent choreographer in various cities including Freiburg, Nürnberg, Neustrelitz and Hildesheim (Germany). In the 2008/09 season, she took up her first position as ballet director at the Landestheater Coburg. In the 2010/11 season, she became ballet director of the Schleswig-Holsteinischen Landestheater.

 “What lies at the core of my ballets is not the way in which man moves, but that which moves him. For me, dance is more than a purely aesthetic phenomenon; it is a movement language that magnifies and uncovers the emotional state of a character as if under a magnifying glass.”

Katharina Torwesten