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Born in Arizona, and raised in Vermont, USA, Emily Welther holds a bachelor's degree in Drama from the Experimental Theater Wing of New York University, and a bachelor's degree in Dance/Dance-Making from the European Dance Development Center, Arnhem, the Netherlands. She has been educated as a yoga teacher at the Soboco Yoga Institute Cologne and has completed her Master of Performance Practices at ArtEZ in Arnhem in September 2021. Since moving to Cologne, Germany in 2004, Emily has worked extensively as a dancer/performer in the freelance scene there and throughout Europe, and has recently been performing her own work at festivals in the Netherlands and Northern Ireland. She currently experiments with live and digital performance and sonic installations, exploring the sounds that emerge when the human body and its environment come in closest contact.
As part of her ongoing artistic research, Emily explores liveness and fragmentation in collecting and documenting audio and visual encounters with nonhuman bodies, most recently with plants. Current developments situate her work in the overlapping genres of live performance and sonic art as she explores the invisible, the unknown and the void as integral components of the body. Expanding her own movement and performance styles by including the fields of live and recorded sound, vocalizations, and text, she currently explores ways to curate immersive sound and movement environments which invite the audience to experience their own body as resonating, permeable parts of their surroundings.
Digitally enhancing nearly inaudible sounds into booming vibrations, she asks: how can minute details be amplified, and what does that do to the listening bodies? How can the placement of live and recorded sounds in a space, move and re/move the bodies in that space? In breaking apart syntax and re-structuring words, her practice looks as well for the unknown and invisible in language and meaning, like in her poetic experiments of
fr- e ;qu e )n” cy u,r g)e/n c yv. oi. c (e.
photo@ Nadine Targiel 2023
Education
1998 - 2002 Experimental Theater Wing, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University (BA in Drama)
2000 - 2004 European Dance Development Center, Arnhem, NL (BA in Dance/Dance-Making)
2019 -2021 Master of Performance Practices, ArtEZ, NL
Own work and collaborations
2024 as Gemneye (with Irina Baldini), 4bid Gallery Amsterdam and Barnes Crossing Köln, e.V.
RAIN RAINS UP
Film, ECC Performance Art VR Gallery, VestAndPage's online Masterclass
reflections
2023 Emily Welther with Daniel Brandl, Echo Echo’s Festival of Movement and Dance, Derry, N. Ireland
equilibrium
with Irina Baldini, Kunstkapel Amsterdam, 4bid Gallery Amsterday
Through a Portal
with Irina Baldini and daz disley, 4bid Gallery
Performance at 4bidden sounds/ 4bidden spaces
2022 Performance Opera with VestAndPage. Forte Marghera and Plaza de Mora, Venice.
Body Matters, Under Scars
2021 Emily Welther with Daniel Brandl, cello + fx. Echo Echo’s Festival of Movement and Dance, Derry, N. Ireland (online performance)
I N T E R F A C E; a digital performance in shared time
Emily Welther, performance, sounds, video. Master of Performance Practices Final Performance
Landscape of Liveness
Emily Welther, online performance for the accreditation “Cutting Through”
Landscape of Liveness (online version)
2019-2020 Emily Welther with Tardigrad Duo and Barbara Schröer, Kulturbunker Mülheim. Nominated for the Cologne Dance Prize 2019
OHNE time
2018 Emily Welther with Tardigrad Duo
FLAW / MAKEL, tanz.tausch Festival Cologne, Barnes Crossing e.V.
2017-18 Emily Welther with Guiseppe Mautone, percussion
D O O R, Barnes Crossing e.V., Cologne
2013 Solo Residency, MAD Festival, Cologne
Headless
2011 Scholarship of the State Ministry for Culture and Science NRW
Solo in collaboration with Echo Echo Dance Theater / Ursula Lauebli
It Just Might Be Enough, Derry/Londonderry, N. Ireland
2010-15 MIRA / Julia Riera, Julia Franken
Mira 1, Mira 2 - a piece about unbuttoning, Mira 3- the passport book of my shadow, Mira 4- wish, Barnes Crossing, Arkadas Theater, Kunsthaus Rhenania, Kolumba Museum, Cologne
2007-2010 Crap Girls / Melina Seldes, Maite Larraneta
This is Serious Stuff, Tanz Hautnah Festival, Cologne; 638kgTanz Festival, Essen
La Noche en Blanco, Madrid; LEM School, Buenos Aires
Funders
Stadt Köln, Kunst Stiftung NRW, Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft, Landesbüro Tanz NRW, Kultur und Schule, LAG, COMENIUS
Work as a dancer/performer
2010- 24 Barbara Fuchs / Tanzfuchs Produktion, Barnes Crossing e.V., Cologne, festivals throughout Europe and Japan, West Wind, Oldenburger Tanztage
Headwalkers, Munch!, Buckets of Feelings!, Pffhhh..., Piece of Paper , Fette Kette, Dingsbums, Foyer, Mood Swing, Disorder, PlusMinus, Mischpoke
2017-19 FreiRaum Ensemble / Arthur Shopa and Ruben Reniers, Factory Heeder, Krefeld; Odonien, Cologne
Here I Am, Solo+
2016-18 Comedia Theater Cologne with Barbara Fuchs / Tanzfuchs
Max Wants to Kiss!
2012-16 Marion Dieterle/Dossier 3D Poetry, Cologne
Meat and dolls, chicks.
2011-12 Silke Z. / Resistdance, tanhaus nrw Düsseldorf
Sweded
2005-14 Echo Echo Dance Theater Ensemble / Steve Batts, Ursula Lauebli, Wolfgang Hoffman. Derry/Londonderry, N. Ireland
Resonance II, Consequences, Ripple Affect, Motion Ensemble
2006-08 Ilona Pasthy / Iptanz, Barnes Crossing e.V., Cologne
skin thing, EinsZwei
2006 Angie Hiesl Productions / City Theatre Cologne
Hair and hair and hair ....
2004-05 Stadttheater Heilbronn / Katja Wolf
Euridice
2003 Katja Wolf and Markus Grolle. tanzhaus nrw
Wolf Dances
Teaching
2020- present Performance Courses and Dance for Children Seminars, TH University Cologne
2023-present Dance for Children, FreiRaum Wald Kita Türnich
2021-24 Dance and dance-film courses, Berufskolleg Bergheim
Ich tanze aus mir heraus, Move! On! Camera!
2017-19 Project course dance, Freiherr-vom-Stein-Gymnasium Leverkusen supported by Kultur und Schule
Generation Z, Move Me
2016 project course dance, FALS Solingen
E-Motion, FALS Solingen, Award 2nd place Walder Theater Days
2014-17 UrbanMachen and dance accomplices, Barnes Crossing e.V., Cologne
OGS of the GGS Nibelungen Str., Cologne with Marion Dieterle and Barbara Schröer, supported by Chance Tanz
Falling, My point of view, School Upside Down, Around And in the Middle – Let Me Show You My World, Where We Meet
2014 Friedrich-Albert-Lange-Schule Solingen
Home Pina, with students from FALS and University of England, Leeds
2011 Echo Echo Dance Theater / Junior Company with Klaas Voigt, Saxophone
Of Earth
2005-10 SpinaTheatre Solingen / Olek Witt
School No. 1, Money Money Money, Book of Faces, City Theater Solingen Festivals and Awards Europe-wide
Vinyasa Yoga Teacher (yoga-mit-emily.com)
2017- present Yoga Mit Emily, Bergheim
2023- present Activiva Pulheim
2023- present Yoga Oase Glessen
2016-18 YogaRoom Cologne
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