"An artist, a philosopher, a dancer who looks into depth and toward the future." Doz. Ursi Gigler Gausterer

Tomas Danielis (Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, 1980) is a choreographer, media artist, and curator whose work is grounded in the totality of perception—understood as an integrated approach connecting body, text, image, sound, and space. His practice aims at integral arts, where choreography, dramaturgy, media, and text form a unified artistic structure.

Belonging to the generation of Slovak dancers and choreographers emerging in the 1980s, Danielis has developed a position that is often described within the Slovak context as non-conformist and critically independent. His work reflects on the transformative processes of post-communist Slovakia and Central Europe as regions shaped by social, political, and cultural transition. He is widely regarded as one of the leading Slovak dance artists of his generation.

Danielis’s choreography is characterized by a dramaturgical approach that challenges the traditional primacy of music and libretto in dance, instead foregrounding social and sociological questions on stage. His long-term artistic research has focused on power structures, mechanisms of control, and systems of influence, which led him in 2021 to found the artistic and curatorial platform Radical Empathy. Within this framework, he collaborates with artists from different disciplines to explore empathy, human perception, interpersonal relations, and their role in shaping social structures.

His works are frequently described as physically intense, conceptually precise, and dramaturgically uncompromising. They combine a rich and expressive physical language with sparse, pointed, and often ironically humorous texts, forming compositions that function as cohesive artistic wholes. Danielis’s works have been presented in more than 20 countries across three continents. Key works include Custom View, Faidrós, 21&Counting, Mainly Love, and Carry.

In addition to his choreographic work, Danielis has held significant artistic leadership and curatorial roles. From 2016 to 2017, he was head teacher and resident choreographer of Ballet Moscow, where he created Equilibrium, a performance based on game theory research and developed as part of a series examining the mechanics and abuse of power. Earlier, from 2007 to 2009, he served as artistic director and curator of the International Bühnenwerkstatt Tanztheater Festival in Graz, contributing to its programmatic and conceptual development.

Danielis is the recipient of several awards for choreography and performing arts, including the Contest – TanzRat Wien (2007), a special prize for choreography and performance at the Theatre Arts Festival in Rybnik, Poland (2007), and the choreography prize at the same festival in 2009. As a performer, he appeared in the Reumert Award–winning productions Men and Mahler (2013) and Rite of Spring – Extended (2014) with the Danish ensemble Granhøj Dans.

His performance collaborations include cie. Willi Dorner, director Olivier Py, Sasha Waltz & Guests, cie. Felix Ruckert, Freyer Ensemble, and Granhøj Dans. He also worked extensively within classical ballet, serving as a soloist with the Croatian National Ballet in Rijeka, a guest soloist with Ballet Graz, and as a member of the ballet ensemble of the Slovak National Theatre.

Alongside his artistic and curatorial practice, Danielis is active as an educator. His pedagogical work has taken him to institutions and platforms such as Charleroi Danse, Henny Jurriens Studio Amsterdam, CODARTS Rotterdam, TQW Wien, Dansehallerne Copenhagen, Bora Bora Aarhus, Ballet Moscow, Danceworx New Delhi, Hot Summer Kyoto, the Ukrainian Contemporary Dance Platform, Anton Bruckner University Linz, Terence Lewis Academy, and the International Bühnenwerkstatt Tanztheater Festival, among others.