Reut Shemesh
Reut Shemesh, born and raised in Israel, works in the field of contemporary dance, poetry and experimental film. She received her BA from the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in Arnhem (NL), and holds a Master’s in Media and Fine Art from the Kunsthochschule für Medien (KHM) in Cologne (DE). Her works were exhibited and performed at tanzhaus nrw Düsseldorf, Kampnagel Hamburg, Tanzhaus Zürich, Suzanne Dellal Center Tel-Aviv, the Jewish Museum in Berlin, Theatre Lab NYC and the Korzo Theater in Den Haag. She was a guest lecturer for the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Universität zu Köln, Hochschule Düsseldorf (HSD) and the Zentrum für Zeitgenössischen Tanz/ ZZT (Centre for Contemporary Dance) in Cologne, for which Reut has created several student productions in 2021 and 2022.
In 2016, her piece LEVIAH won the Cologne Dance Theatre Prize. Her work was presented in the Israel, the U.S., Switzerland and at several festivals in Germany, including the Tanzplattform, Impulse Festival, tanz nrw and twice at the FAVORITEN FESTIVAL. In 2017 she showed her video work at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival and at the Art Cologne. In April 2019, Shemesh created the piece ATARA during the residency program at K3|Tanzplan Hamburg, which was subsequently invited to the Tanzplattform Germany 2020 and will tour to the Belgian International Arts Festival NEXT! in Ieper. Her research project under the working title WITNESS opened the Impulse Theatre Festival 2019, with its final version COBRA BLONDE premiering at tanzhaus nrw in April 2021. In October 2021, HELLERAU Dresden presented a collection of her most recent pieces and installations in cooperation with the Jüdische Kulturtage (Jewish Culture Days) 2021 under the heading: Portrait: the Choreographer Reut Shemesh.
Her piece BAD MOTHERS, a commission for the Theater Oberhausen, premiered in March 2022 and was her first choreographic commission for an acting ensemble at a German municipal theater. In August 2022, the piece ATARA, and the commissioned work GOLA 3rd Movement for the Maslool Dance School was shown at the Suzanne Dellal Centre in Tel Aviv.
The fourth reworking of the GOLA series, GOLA 4th Movement, premiered in September 2022 at HELLERAU in Dresden and will tour to the (Rh)einfach Fest! at TanzFaktur Cologne and MOVE! Festival in Krefeld later this year. GOLA 5th Movement for students of the ZZT was shown in October 2022 at the Studiotheater of the ZZT in Cologne.
Reut is currently in a long-term collaboration with the Belgian production house fABULEUS in Leuven (BE) for a new piece on the subject of masculinity and sports. The piece will tour several European cities following the premiere in Leuven in 2023.
