Skip to content Biography long
Anna Hein, born in Graz and raised in Carinthia and Vienna, is a multi-award-winning international dancer and choreographer. She is the artistic director of the „Long Night of Dance“ at the CCB - Choreographic Centre Bleiburg/Pliberk. She has been organising the successful annual format, which takes place in various cities in the Alps-Adriatic tri-border region of Austria-Slovenia-Italy, since 2013. She also supports the BMWKMS (Federal Ministry of Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport) in its responsible decisions as an arts advisor for the performing arts.
She trained in classical ballet at the Vienna State Opera and gained contemporary dance experience at danceWEB/ImPulsTanz in Vienna (with Jorma Uotinen and Ismael Ivo, among others), the Venice Biennale (with Carolyn Carlson, Josef Nagy and Wim Vandekeybus, among others) and the Trisha Brown Company in New York. In 1998, she took on her first engagement at the Innsbruck State Theatre. After winning the Tyrolean State Theatre and Carinthian State Prize for Performing Arts, she was named Young Dancer of the Year in the dance magazine balletttanz international. From 2004, she was a member of the Belgian company Charleroi Danses, where she performed as a creative dancer in the globally successful dance/architecture series body-city by Frédéric Flamand with the architects Zaha Hadid and Thom Mayne. Guest appearances in theatre and festival productions at home and abroad followed. She danced under renowned choreographers such as Elio Gervasi, Johann Kresnik, Jochen Ulrich, Mei Hong Lin, Jean Renshaw, Eric Trottier and many more, and always loved being a dancer at SiWiC in Zurich under the direction of Nigel Charnock and Susanne Linke - an exciting international Swiss training programme for young choreographers. During a lengthy work-related knee injury, her focus increasingly shifted to creating her own choreographies, dance projects for children and young people and teaching classical ballet, contemporary dance, Peak Pilates and movement training for actors.
She created her first choreographic commissions for Tanzherbst Feldkirch, Swarovski Kristallwelten, Tolentini-Kreuzgang-Venedig, MMKK Klagenfurt and neuebuenevillach, among others. She increasingly swapped the conventional stage for other spaces and favoured open-air experiments. She created further choreographies such as blanche, inspired by Per Olov Enquist's view of the figure of Marie Curie, the tower, a staging of the historic diving tower in Millstatt, the swimmer in co-operation with Josef Winkler, hidden senses with the Danish band Afenginn, painted and danced with the music band Aufstrich as part of the Carinthian Summer music festival. She deliberately created all of these pieces with live musicians, most of whom were closely involved in the stage action.
Anna Hein also found interest in collaborations with theatre directors: She created further choreographies for, among others Prezih's dream with Bernd Liepold-Mosser, BeingElse with Rachelle Nkou, Having to live with Johann Kresnik, Beet.Symph.Five with Ernst Kurt Weigel and the memorial project and now by Peter Wagner/Clemens Berger.
Her own choreographic interest is currently dance and music-dance-video productions in co-operation with the Finnish-Swedish composer Kim Nyberg/Afenginn. Besides her dance and choreographic career, Anna has always had a great passion for passing on the joy of dance by teaching dance workshops in different dance styles - depending on the needs and level of the participants.
Biography short
Anna Hein, multi-award-winning, versatile dancer and choreographer from Carinthia/Austria, is trained in both classical ballet (Vienna State Opera) and contemporary dance (Vienna, Venice, New York, Dance Web). She has worked with renowned choreographers on many theatre and festival stages and has already created a number of her own pieces. She is increasingly swapping the conventional stage for other spaces and loves experimenting in the open air and under unusual conditions. Anna Hein has worked as a creative dancer in the globally successful dance/architecture series „body-city“ by Frédéric Flamand (Brussels) with the architects Zaha Hadid and Thom Mayne, among others, and opened the Carinthian Summer in the Stiftshof in Ossiach in 2003, staged the Innsbruck-Mitte transformer station, the Tolentini cloister as a scholarship holder of the Venice Biennale and in 2008 the historic diving tower in Millstatt as well as Peter Wagner's memorial year project in Oberwart („Und jetzt“). In 2009, Anna Hein performed at the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg in the world premiere of Eric Trottier's dance piece „Arena“ and in 2010 in „Jennifer“ by Nikolaus Adler in Vienna. She has created new choreographies of her own for the EU project „grenzenlos“ (Slovenia/Austria), the Carinthian Summer, the Salzkammergut Festwochen and the opening of the Centre for Choreography Bleiburg/Pliberk, among others. In 2013, Anna launched „the Pulcinella project„, in which she combines commedia dell'arte and contemporary dance.