Profile

Susanne Martin (PhD) is a researcher, choreographer, performer, and teacher in the field of contemporary dance and performance. Her work is presented internationally.

In her research and artistic practice she focuses on improvisation as a crucial practice within the contemporary performing arts, artistic research methods, and interdisciplinary improvisation-based approaches to learning, knowledge production and knowledge dissemination.

In her teaching for professional artists and performers she currently focusses on contact improvisation, instant composition, improvisation-based workout, age politics, and artistic research methods. In her teaching for students and researchers from other fields she supports embodied learning, somatic sensibility, age reflexivity, and performance skills through improvisation practices.

She has been a guest lecturer at the following academic institutions: Middlesex University, UK; University of Northampton, UK; University of Roehampton, UK; Bowdoin College Brunswick, USA; Budapest Contemporary Dance Academy, Hungary.

Selection of recent activities

In 2017 she published her doctoral thesis Dancing Age(ing): Rethinking Age(ing) in and through Improvisation Practice and Performance. This university funded PhD research argues that specific approaches to a long-term, open-ended dance practice, alongside critical images and new imaginations of age(ing) in performance, allow dance to evolve as an age critical arts practice (PhD completed 2016 at Middlesex University London).

Since 2018 she teaches artistic research methods at Somatic Academy Berlin.

Since 2011 she curates, hosts, and performs Susi & Gabi’s Salon in collaboration with choreographer and urbanist Gabriele Reuter. In dialogue with invited guest artists and the audience these participatory Kunstvermittlung events (médiation artistique) revolve around the practices, working methods, and audience-performer relationships in contemporary dance and improvisation-based performance.

In collaboration with the musican Marlène Colle she curates and hosts 7 minutes of fame, a monthly performance evening that brings together dance, poetry, pop, experimental music, and performance art in a traditional Berlin corner bar (since 2016 ongoing).

Her piece Von der Schönheit und Seltsamkeit des Anlehens, co-choreographed with Eliane Hutmacher won in the German national competion Tanztreffen der Jugend 2017.

She creates stage works since 1990……