Ben J. Riepe
22/01 - 19/03/2017

Ben J. Riepe

Ben J. Riepe was born in 1979 and studied Dance and Coreography at Folkwang Schule, in Essen, Germany. After finishing his studies, he worked as a dancer at the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch and at the V.A. Wölf/NEUR Tanz, amongst others. As a choreographer, he has received various prizes and has been working independently since 2006. Besides dedicating himself to his own company, he also collaborates with the Folkwang Tanzstudio Essen, the FAVORITEN Theater Festival, DPAC DANCE COMPANY and KOREA National Contemporary Dance Company, along with the Goethe Institut of Malaysia and Korea, respectively.
 
Through workshops he conveys his work process, research, choreography concept as well as his way of dealing with space and time. Since 2009 he has received the excellency sponsorship of the state of North-Rhine Westphalia and since 2015 he has received it also from the city of Düsseldorf, in the same German state. Since 2010, he has maintained a space of his own, in Düsseldorf, as well as affiliating himself to PACT Zollverein, in Essen. For the choreography Livebox: Persona, he received, in October of 2016, the jury prize at the FAVORITEN Theater Festival, in Dortmund. 
 
His work can be defined as a dynamic form in progress, which is always looking to confront itself. Through this confrontation method Ben J. Riepe has, in the last few years, dedicated himself to the search of aesthetic mediums and formats that manifest themselves by the interaction with spatial structures specific to certain places, and through interfaces with neighboring fields, such as music, performance and installation. In this cosmos of languages, time and space are fundamental axis in whose center lays the human being and its body: as a medium and space of resonance, as tool, witness and creator.