Curriculum Vitae

Ralf Jaroschinski was born in Southern Germany in February of 1966 and grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He was trained at the University for Music, Theater and Media in Hannover, Germany, and on a stipend by the German Academic Exchange Service in New York, USA. For six seasons he danced as a guest in the Lower Saxonian National Ballet Company of Hannover, worked as a dancer and choreographic assistant at the German Nuremberg City Theater and as an assistant, teacher and rehearsal director at the National Theater in Braunschweig, Germany. As a free-lance dancer, choreographer and teacher of contemporary dance techniques, he worked in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Mexico and the US. In 1998, he became the German Hildesheim City Theater Dance Company's artistic director and choreographer, directing its twelve dancers until July of 2002. Jaroschinski currently teaches at various dance studios, schools, universities, and festivals, directs rehearsals and choreographs as an independent for several dance companies by commission - in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

At the Lower Saxonian National Theater in Hannover, Jaroschinski danced in the corps de ballet and interpreted such roles as "Jesus" and "The Executioner" in Lothar Höfgen's "Love or War" and "Prior" in Tom Schilling's "Romeo and Juliet". He created the choreography for Charles Ebert's "Soldier's Tale" by Igor Stravinsky which was presented at the German Neuburg an der Donau City Theater and in which he also interpreted the role of "The Devil". At the Nuremberg City Theater, he worked together with Jean Renshaw, Roberto Galván, Niels-Peter Rudolph, and Vivienne Newport as a dancer and choreographic assistant. Ever since choreographing his own works, Jaroschinski enjoyed the crossover with other art forms - hence, his collaborations with the mask designer Hans-Ulrich Buchwald, the painter Jacques Gassmann and the actor René Schack. He choreographed multiple pieces for soloists of the German Bonn Choreographic Theater, the Leipzig Ballet and the Lower Saxonian National Ballet Company of Hannover which were presented in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Mexico, and the US. In 1997 and 1998, he created the dance concerts "Mutig zu sein bedeutet nicht, keine Angst zu haben" ("To Be Courageous Does Not Mean to Have No Fear"), "Babette", "tantalizing", "Auflösen" ("To Dissolve"), "Soirée russe" ("Russian Night"), and "flux" in Hannover with local, municipal and regional funding and toured with those throughout Germany and Austria.

At the Hildesheim City Theater, he created several dances for theatrical and musical works and choreographed “South Pacific”, the European premiere. Moreover, he put together a dozen galas and "Tanzwerkstätten" ("Dance Workshops"), which were designed to introduce ideas and aesthetics of contemporary choreography to the audience. With the Hildesheim City Theater Dance Company, Jaroschinski produced and extensively toured the dance concerts: "Tierisches" ("Animalia"), "Gesellschaftsspiele" ("Social Games"), "Karmen" (with live orchestra), "Aus der neuen Welt" ("From the New World"), "Dämonen" ("Demons", with a musician), "Lieben" ("To Love", with two actors), "Jugendsünden" ("Sins of Youth", with live orchestra), "Das Schwanensee-Märchen" ("The Fairy Tale Swan Lake") for children and adults (with a singer), "Am Meer" ("By the Sea", with a musician), "Trash" (with an actor), and "Der Vagabund" ("The Vagabond", with a singer and a musician). In the season of 1999/2000, he also directed the world premiere of Wilfried Hiller's "Schulamit" - with dancers, an actress, soloist singers (both children and adults), a choir consisting of over 80 singers, live orchestra, and the Klezmer-virtuoso Giora Feidman.

In 1999, Jaroschinski returned to teach his piece from 1995, "Auf der schönen blauen Erde" ("On the Beautiful Blue Earth"), to the dancers of the Lower Saxonian National Ballet Company of Hannover - this work won a choreography award. The dancers of the company "Stichting EuregioDans" (Heerlen, the Netherlands - Aachen, Germany - Liège, Belgium) staged his "Petite nostalgie nymphale" and the award winning "Intuition Blast" in their 1999/2000 season. In 1999, this piece had also been included in the Bavarian National Ballet Company’s repertoire. Presented by the former German Foreign Affairs Minister Joschka Fischer in 2000, it was toured throughout Asia, reaching New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Calcutta, India. In the same year, "Intuition Blast" was performed in the “Birgit Keil Dance Foundation Ballet Gala” in Ludwigsburg, Germany. It was also shown in Mehmet Balkan’s “Ballet Gala” (Hannover, 2001) and in Oleg Makhov’s “Benefit Galas for Children with Cancer” (in Munich, 2003 and in Stuttgart, Germany, 2005). In the season of 2001/2002, Jaroschinski was commissioned by Ivan Liška to create a choreography for the Bavarian National Ballet Company in Munich, the result was "Satchmo Serenades". And, the Junior Company of the Bavarian National Ballet toured with "Intuition Blast" from 2011 until 2016 throughout Europe.

After his Hildesheim period, he produced the dance concerts "Soirée populaire" ("Popular Night", 2003), "T’embers - Die vier Temperamente" ("T'embers - The Four Temperaments", 2003), "Bizarre Love Triangle" (2004), "Eins" ("One", 2005), "Pool" (2006), and "Postmodern Superheroes" (2007) in Hannover, with municipal, regional and national funding. Kammertänzerin Prof. Birgit Keil commissioned Jaroschinski to create a dance concert for the National Ballet Company of Southwest Germany that was designed for children and adults: “Scheherazade" premiered in April of 2004, in Karlsruhe. It also was part of the company’s 2004/2005 season and continued to be part of its 2005/2006 season. In 2011, "Scheherazade" has been part of the National Ballet’s repertoire for the eighth year in a row, totalling more than 50 performances. On top of this, the Karlsruhe National Ballet Company premiered his creation "Suite sportive" in June of 2009 - stage, lighting installation and costumes were designed by rosalie. The suite continued to be part of the company's 2009/2010 season. In April of 2010, the Children’s and Youth’s Theater Department ("KJT") of the Regional Theater in Tübingen, premiered Jaroschinski's "Die Abenteuer des Peer Gynt" ("The Adventures of Peer Gynt") which continued to be part of its 2010/2011 season. In March of 2016, he created the choreography "Breakwater" for the "Bangkok City Ballet (BDB)" in Thailand. In January of 2019, the "Company 51" premiered his dance piece "Lola", his film "My Heart as a River" in November of 2021, and his choreography "Estonia" in November of 2023 in Stuttgart-Filderstadt, Germany. In April of 2019, 22 amateur dancers and a boy showed the choreography "Männersache" ("Man's Business") by Gianni Cuccaro and Ralf Jaroschinski, and in March of 2023, 23 amateur performers premiered the dance theater piece "Queerverbindungen" ("Queer Connections") by Ralf Jaroschinski and Tiago Manquinho as part of the German "Theater Bielefeld" community dance project "Schrittmacher". In June of 2021 the National Theater in Braunschweig, Germany, premiered the piece "Narben" ("Scars") with text by Katharina Kern and the choreography by Jörg Wesemüller, Gregor Zöllig, Ralf Jaroschinski, the Braunschweig dance theater company and the actors Larissa Semke, Roman Konieczny, and Klaus Meininger. In October of 2022, it presented "Siegfried - eine Bewegung" ("Siegfried - a Movement") to music by Steffen Schleiermacher and in November of 2023 Carl Orff's "Carmina burana" in the choreography by Gregor Zöllig, Ralf Jaroschinski, Susan McDonald, and the Braunschweig dance theater company with singers, the Braunschweiger Domchor, and the Braunschweig National Theater's Kinderchor, Chor and Staatsorchester for the first time. In October of 2021, Jaroschinski's dance piece "The (love) Song Book" to Tetsuya Hori's composition of the same name had its premiere with voice artist Izumi Ose and dancer Joshua Haines in the Kempten City Theater within the dance festival "Kemptener Tanzherbst".

Jaroschinski also choreographed with dance students: In November of 2002, his piece "U", commissioned for 36 dancers of Konstanze Vernon's Dance Foundation "Heinz-Bosl-Stiftung", premiered in the Munich National Theater and was followed by "Funny Flowers" in 2005. The dance students of the John Cranko-School Stuttgart premiered his piece "Tag am Meer" ("Day by the Sea") in May of 2005. In November of 2011, his creation "Square Dance" with a cast of 75 students including children and seniors of the Dance Academy of the German Mannheim University of Music and Performing Arts has been premiered in Stuttgart. In the 2014/2015 season, the Mannheim students also staged Jaroschinski's "Suite sportive" which had been premiered in 2009 by the Karlsruhe National Ballet. The "KaRi.Tanzhaus" students performed his pieces "Hundert - Szene III" ("Hundred - Scene III") in 2015 and "Homestead" in 2018 at the "Stadttheater Kempten" in Germany for the first time. In January of 2020, his choreography "Der Feuervogel" ("The Firebird") had its debut performance at the "KaRi.Tanzhaus" and in July of 2022 "Ansichtssache" ("Point of View") on the "Hildegardplatz". The site-specific dance trilogy "Roots" was premiered in the Kempten "Residenz" inside courtyard in October of 2020, "Tree Trunk Directory" on the "Residenz" meadow in October of 2021, and "Crowning" in the "Residenz Hofgarten" in October of 2023 by the "KaRi.Tanzhaus" junior company, dance students, and by independent dancers. With the German "Berlin Dance Institute" graduation students he created the pieces "Emerging" which premiered there in December of 2021 and "Murmurations" which had its debut performance in July of 2023 at the Uferstudios in Berlin. And with the ones from "Die Etage - Schule für darstellende Künste" he choreographed and staged "In Her Mind" in the "Jugendtheaterwerkstatt Spandau" in Berlin in September of 2022.

With contact improvisation and alignment, he has trained the dancers of "Compañía de ballet de Trujillo" and "Ballet San Marcos" in Lima, Peru, the Brazilian Curitiba "Guaíra" Ballet (BTG), "Frontier Danceland" in Singapore, the "Bangkok City Ballet (BCB)", the National Ballet Company at the Gärtnerplatz Theater in Munich, "Dance Theatre Pforzheim", "Dance Theatre Heidelberg (DTH)", "tanzmainz" at the Mainz National Theater, "Tanz Bielefeld", the National Ballet Company in Hannover, and the Dance Theater Company in Braunschweig in Germany, "Carte blanche" in Bergen, Norway, and also the Swedish "GöteborgsOperans Danskompani", "Cullbergbaletten" in Stockholm, and "Norrdans" in Härnösand since 2004. With "Cullbergbaletten" he also went on tour within Sweden, Norway, and Poland for said purpose. He worked together with organizations that support independent professionals, like "Tanzpunkt Hannover" in Germany, the Swedish "Danscentrum Väst" and "Kulturakademin Trappan" in Gothenburg, "Dansalliansen" and "Danscentrum" in Stockholm, and "Dance Nucleus" in Singapore. Jaroschinski furthermore created and staged several dance concerts based entirely on contact improvisation, such as "Can You Entirely Be?" (2003) in San Francisco, USA, where he also worked together with Scott Wells in "Over You" (2006), he produced many pieces for "Terpsicore Proyectos " in Lima and collaborated with Barbara Pfundt on "Orten" ("To Locate") in Hildesheim, and he created the contact improvisation scores "Space Cowboys" (2008) and "Sci-fi Poetry" (2009) in Hannover, "Never Felt This Way Before" (2010) and "Big Time" (2011) in Berlin, "Fragments and Presence" (2016) and "All Things Considered" (2017) in Kempten im Allgäu, Germany, together with Antonio Alemanno, Diane Gemsch, Mirva Mäkinen, Tetsuya Hori, and Andrew Wass among many others and presented them in Northern and Southern Germany. In August of 2022, the film "Blick Feld (Vision Field)" premiered in Mühlhausen-Rettigheim, Germany, in which he can be seen improvising together with Crystal Schüttler.

Jaroschinski has facilitated contact improvisation for the dance students at the "Arizona State University (ASU)" in Phoenix, at the "Nova Southeastern University (NSU)" in Fort Lauderdale and at the "Florida Atlantic University (FAU)" in Boca Raton, USA, at the "Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Bogotá", Colombia, at the "Universidad de Lima" and at the "Escuela Nacional Superior de Ballet (ENSB)" in Lima, Peru, at the "Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA)" in Salvador, at the "Universidade Federal de Uberlândia (UFU)", at the "Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP)", at the "Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná (PUCPR)" and at the "Universidade estadual do Paraná (UNESPAR)", both in Curitiba, Brazil, and at the "Conservatorio Superior de Danza de Málaga", at the "Conservatorio Profesional de Danza 'Reina Sofía'" in Granada and at "Formació CobosMika SEEDs" in Vall-llobrega, Spain, at the Nantes University in France, at the "Conservatorium Kortrijk" in Belgium, at "Codarts Rotterdam - University of the Arts" and "ArtEZ University of the Arts" in Arnhem in the Netherlands, at the "Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance" and at "Goldsmiths University of London", at "Norges Dansehoyskole (NDH)" in Oslo, Norway, at the Stockholm University of the Arts' "DOCH, Dans och Cirkushögskolan" department in Sweden, at the "Contemporary Dance School Hamburg (CDSH)", at "Norddeutsche TanzWerkstatt" in Hannover, at the "Berlin Dance Institute (BDI)" and "Die Etage - Schule der darstellenden Künste" in Berlin, at the "Palucca Hochschule für Tanz Dresden", at the "Universität Tübingen", and at the "KaRi.Tanzhaus" in Kempten in Germany, as well as at the "Thammasat University" in Bangkok and at the "LASALLE College of the Arts" in Singapore. He has designed and staged contact improvisation scores for the students at the "Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Bogotá" in Colombia, at the "Formació CobosMika SEEDs" in Vall-llobrega, Spain, at the "KaRi.Tanzhaus" in Kempten im Allgäu, the "Berlin Dance Institute (BDI)", and "Die Etage - Schule der darstellenden Künste" in Berlin, the Stockholm University of the Arts, and "Footnote New Zealand Dance Choreolab" in Wellington. By now, he has created over 100 choreographies and improvisations that have been presented in the US, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Spain, Italy, France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, India, Malaysia, and New Zealand.

Jaroschinski has worked together with the "Goethe-Institut Lima", the "Centro Español del Perú", the "Centro Cultural de España en Lima (CCE)", and also with the "Goethe-Institut Porto Alegre" and the "Centro Cultural Brasil Alemanha (CCBA)" in Recife, Brazil, as well as with "Wisper" in Gent, Belgium. He has facilitated contact improvisation classes and workshops in Argentina, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, the United Arab Emirates, and Japan a. o. He has taught numerous times at the "West Coast Contact Improvisation Jam (wcciJAM)" in Berkeley, at the "Portland Regional Jam", at the "Santa Cruz Dance Festival", and at the "Northern California Dance Collective (NCDC) Summer Dance Camp" near Fresno in the US, at the "Encuentro Internacional de Improvisación por Contacto" in Lima and in Cusco, and at the "Festival Internacional de Ballet" in Trujillo, Peru, at the "Encuentro de Danza Contact Improvisación Santiago Chile", at the "Encontro Diamantino de Contato Improvisação de Igatu", at "Anápolis em Contato", at "Campinas em Contato", at the "Encontro internacional de contato improvisação São Paulo (EICI)", at "Contact in Rio" in Rio de Janeiro, at the "Festival internacional de contato improvisação na natureza, Florianópolis", and at "Sul em Contato" in Porto Alegre, Brazil, at the "Barcelona New Year Dance Festival", at "Santander Soma CI Summer", and at "Touch & Play" in Cardona, Spain, at the "Spark Intimacy Festival" in Amsterdam, Netherlands, at "Connections" in London, UK, at the "Contact Improvisation Mini Festival" in Copenhagen, Denmark, at "Warsaw Flow" in Poland, at the "New Years Contact Improvisation Festival Berlin", "Stretch" and "Touch & Play" in Berlin, at the "Pfingst-Jam Potsdam", at "Sommertanztage an der Norddeutschen TanzWerkstatt" in Hannover, at "Contact Meets Contemporary (CMC)" and "Easter Improv Festival" in Göttingen, at the "DresdenFestival ContactImprovisation", at the "Contact Improv Festival Stuttgart" and the "Tanzworkshop Stuttgart-Oeffingen", at the "Pfingst Contact Festival Ulm", at the "Internationales Tanzfestival Ingolstadt", and at "Kemptener Tanzherbst" in Kempten, Germany, at "Nachschub" in Basel, Switzerland, at the "Contact Festival Austria" near Vienna, at the "Israeli Contact Improvisation Festival (ICIF)" in Tel Aviv, Israel, at the "Dancehouse Summer Intensive" in Melbourne, Australia, and at "Footnote New Zealand Dance Choreolab" in Wellington, New Zealand.

And, he has also facilitated contact improvisation for the actors at the German National Theater in Braunschweig, for the acting students at the "University of Essex" in Southend-on-Sea in the UK, at the "Escuela Nacional Superior de Arte Dramático (ENSAD)" in Lima, and at the "Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS)" in Porto Alegre, Brazil, as well as for the shiatsu students at the International School of Shiatsu ("ISS Kiental") in Switzerland. He trained the improvisation research collectives "SummuS Dança Contato Improvisação" in Curitiba, "Conectivo Nozes" in Uberlândia, Brazil, and "Danza Común" in Bogotá, the senior citizen dancers of the Australian "Canberra Dance Theatre (CDT)", and the mixed ability company members of "Karen Peterson & Dancers" in Miami, USA, with contact improvisation. He also facilitated this technique for patients at the "ViaNobis" hospital for mental health, psychotherapy and psychosomatic medicine in Gangelt, Germany, and for the highly gifted students at the "Unidade de Trabalho Diferenciado Habilidades Altas/ Superdotação da Prefeitura de Angra dos Reis" in Brazil.

In 1993, Jaroschinski was found among the winners of the "7th International Choreographic Competition" in Hannover, Germany, with "Ernst ist das Leben, heiter die Kunst" ("Life is Serious, Art is Serene"). In 1994, he was a recipient of the German Federal Ministry for Education and Science's "Sponsorship Award" for the piece "Wie kann man den Himmel besitzen" ("How to Possess the Sky"). In 1995, he won first prize at the "9th International Choreographic Competition" in Hannover with "Auf der schönen blauen Erde" ("On the Beautiful Blue Earth"). In the same year, he was granted an entire season to study dance and composition techniques in New York City through a stipend from the German Academic Exchange Service (“DAAD”) in Bonn for his piece “Ária“. In 1996, he received an award from the "Dance in Education Fund Inc." in White Plains, New York, USA, for his choreography “Ballroom”, and at the biannual choreographic competition of the Ettlingen "Days of the Dance" festival in Germany he was found among the winners that same year, as well as in 1998. In 1997, Jaroschinski's piece "M" received the special prize "Best Premiere" at the "1st International Solo Dance Theater Festival" in Augsburg. And at the "12th International Choreographic Competition" in Hannover in 1998, he won the audience's prize for "Intuition Blast".