BCURIOUS · PROFESSIONAL

with Helge Letonja | Mariko Koh & the company Of Curious Nature

The workshops offer insights into the company’s daily working practice and provide excerpts from the repertoire.
Helge Letonja, the artistic director and in-house choreographer of Of Curious Nature, applies his choreographic methods rooted in somatic bodywork. By exploring the body systems – bones, muscles, ligaments, fascia and breath – and combining these with various academic dance techniques, he develops expressive movement tools for the choreographic process from a deep inner connection. These tools are continuously developed and expanded with the dancers of Of Curious Nature.

The tools create an inner connection to your own movement and thus generate a convincing, authentic expression of movement for you as a dancer.

Letonja’s dance language is rich in emotional depth and balances between sensitive introspection and dynamic energy. Here, the body is the vessel of a contemporary dance language characterized by presence with volume and weight in space.  The choreographic tools – impulse, fixation, lines and curves as well as movements outside the orbit – serve as building blocks for an unique and impressive movement language.

As part of the workshops, you will learn choreographic sequences from the company’s multi-layered repertoire and immerse yourself in OCN’s universe of movement. Based on the choreography “Préludes”, the connection between dynamics, music and movement will be explored using the movement tools “Reach”, Dimensions and Ligaments. Songs of Love and Bones” is about multifaceted, emotional expression in body language in preparation for solo works. With “Un-zeit” we focus on extreme and expressive movement using the tools “Out of Orbit” and “Fragmentation” as examples.

“A Late Summer Nights Dream” combines collective and ritualized elements with the tools ‘Fixation’ and “Cupping” in a rave-like setting and focuses on movement in group choreographies.

Workshop direction

As artistic director of steptext dance project and the dance company Of Curious Nature, Helge Letonja has created more than 60 dance works presented worldwide, often realized through interdisciplinary and transcultural collaborations. He also choreographs for opera productions, including work for the Salzburg Festival, the Zurich Opera House, the Berlin State Opera, the New National Opera Tokyo, the Semperoper Dresden, and the Opera in Beijing.

As a choreographer, Letonja creates vivid images that reflect social conditions and processes, linking emotional and mental movements of individual and collective bodies with metaphorical contexts. In his recent works with Of Curious Nature, he deepens the artistic expression of his ensemble in order to portray the complexity of contemporary human experience. His repertoire ranges from dynamic, powerful ensemble pieces to poetic and metaphorical choreographic landscapes. He is also a committed advocate for dance, both in his adopted home of Bremen and nationally, serving as a board member of the German Dance Association.

As a dancer, Letonja studied classical dance in Graz and Amsterdam, as well as modern dance with Alvin Ailey and Erick Hawkins in New York. He has performed in a wide range of styles, from ballet at the Graz Opera to work with Jan Fabre, Montréal Danse, and Tanztheater Bremen under Susanne Linke, among others.

Mariko Koh, born in Japan, received her Classic Ballet education at Sachiko Sakon Ballet studio and
graduated at Kobe College with a Bachelor in 2012. During this time, she gained her knowledge of Contemporary Dance, Classic Ballet and Martha Graham Technique by Toru Shimazaki, Jan NUYTS and Owen Montague. From 2012 to 2013 she was a member of the Ballet junior de Genève dancing pieces by Alexander Ekman, Stijin Celis, Ken Ossola, Barack Marshall, Guilherme Botelho, Cindy Van
Acker and Thierry Malandain. In 2013 and 2014 she worked as a soloist dancer for Stadttheater Bremerhaven. After that she started working as a freelance dancer throughout Europe, joining productions of Unterwegs Theater Heidelberg, the Grand Théâtre de la Ville du Luxembourg and Forum Schlosspark in Ludwigsburg.
In 2016 she started working with steptext dance project und danced in several productions by Helge Letonja. In 2017, she participated in the co-production OUT OF JOINT in choreographies by Letonja and Gregory Maqoma of the Vuyani Dance Company, among others. In 2019 she was a part of the Opera production “Tristan and Isolde” at La Monnaie choreographed by Fernando Melo and in 2020 of “Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno” at National Opera Comédie. In 2022 she performed a piece from Natalie Wagner at Network international Danza Puglia. Since the summer of 2022, she has been a certified lecturer for Countertechnique. She works as a guest teacher for professional dance companies and universities.
Mariko Koh is the new Choreographic Assistant and Training Director of Of Curious Nature since the beginning of the 2023/24 season.