About Tomas Danielis

Choreographer and media artist Tomas Danielis (Banska Bystrica, Slovakia, 1980) is known for creating artworks founded on the totality of perception aiming at integral arts. Member of the outstanding generation of Slovak dancers and choreographers born in the 80ties, he is often nicked as a black sheep of the Slovak contemporary dance scene due to his uncompromising approach to arts and reflection of transformative processes in post-communistic Slovakia as Central Europe country in transition. He is considered one of the foremost Slovak dance artists.

His choreography engages in a type of dramaturgy overruling the primacy of music and libretto in dance, engaging in exploring sociological works on stage. After working on questions of mechanics of power he founded in 2021 collective Radical Empathy, in which along with his colleagues explores topics of empathy, fundamentals of human perceptions and interactions and their impact on creating sociological structures.

His work had been “characterised by high intensity of movement expressiveness, defined intellectual concept and uncompromising dramaturgical stylisation. Choreography made of extraordinary images expressed in a rich physical language complemented by spare poignant and often ironically funny texts in total as comprehensible as music, sculpture, painting or architecture. Danielis works had been presented in over 20 countries on 3 continents. His most notable works are Custom View, Faidrós, 21&counting, Mainly Love and Carry.

In 2016 and 2017 Danielis were the head teacher and resident choreographer of Ballet Moskva, where he also created performance Equilibrium based on game theory research as a part of a series about mechanics of power with a particular accent on abuse of power. From 2007 to 2009 he was art director of Int. Bühnenwerkstatt Tanztheater Festival Graz.

Tomas Danielis is laureate of a number of prizes for performing art and choreography, such as the 2007 Contest – TanzRat Wien, a special prize for choreography and performing art at the 2007 Theatre Arts Festival in Rybnik, Poland, and the prize for choreography at the same event in 2009. His performing activities also saw him in the Reumert Award-winning productions “Men and Mahler” (2013) and “Rite of Spring – Extended” (2014) as a member of Danish ensemble Granhøj Dans.

As a performer, he collaborated with cie.W.Dorner, director Olivier Py, Sasha Waltz and guests (as a guest), cie. F.Ruckert, Freyer Ensemble, Granhoj Dans. Danielis also ventured for 4 years in ballet. He was a soloist of Croatian national Ballet in Rijeka, guest soloist of Ballet Graz and member of the ballet ensemble of Slovak National Theatre.

His pedagogical work brought him to Charleroi Dans, Henny Jurriens Amsterdam, NRW Düsseldorf, CODARTS,TQW Wien, Hot Summer Kyoto, Dansehallerne Copenhagen, Bora Bora Arhus, Ballet Moscow, Danceworx New Delhi, Tsekh, Ukrainian Contemporary Dance platform, Int. Bühnenwerkstatt Tanztheater Festival, Anton Bruckner university Linz, Terrence Lewis academy and others.