Claudia Rosiny


Claudia Rosiny is a German-Swiss academic in Dance and Media studies, a festival director and cultural manager. She became internationally known as an expert on video dance. Having served as a co-director of the Berne Dance Days for many years, she teaches at the University of Bern and at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and is in charge of Dance and Theatre at the Federal Office for Culture, Berne.

Biography

Claudia Rosiny grew up the eldest of six siblings in the, an old water mill in Cologne-Buchheim. Her father,
was an architect, her mother Johanna Rosiny née Riedel, a psychotherapist for children and adolescents. After completing her training as a gymnastics teacher, Rosiny studied Theatre, Film and Television, German and Education at the University of Cologne. For three semesters, she also attended the Play-Music-Dance course as a guest student at the German Sport University Cologne. In 1987/88 she did one semester of Theatre Studies at the University of Amsterdam. In 1997, she did a PhD with her dissertation being on Video Dance at the Institute of Theatre Studies at the University of Berne.
Since her studies Claudia Rosiny has devoted herself to her specialist fields of Video Dance and Intermediality in Dance: "Inter- and transdisciplinary cultural studies are needed in an art context of convergence, in which the disciplines come together, connect and enable new experiences of perception. If time travel was possible, I would like to talk to the pioneers of film and dance, like Georges Méliès or Loïe Fuller, and ask them what, back then, fascinated them most in the interplay of movement of dance and film."
She is married to Reto Clavadetscher, they have a daughter and live in Bern.

Awards

This festival of contemporary dance was established in 1987 by Reto Clavadetscher and co-directed by Claudia Rosiny from 1991 to 2007. Highlights of the Berne Dance Days include the themed festivals Danseimage and Kunststückkörper, and guest performances by renowned dance artists such as, Wim Vandekeybus, Sasha Waltz, Meg Stuart
and many others. The Berne Dance Days are documented on several media platforms:
Since its foundation in 1998, the Kornhausforum has been a venue for design and social politics. The concept for its occupancy, demonstrating a pronounced bias towards culture, was determined via a referendum of the Bernese people. Over ten years – first as a co-director, then, from 2006 onwards, solely in charge – Claudia Rosiny steered its development as a cultural centre focusing on architecture, design, photography, video, new media and socio-political issues. In addition to around 300 events per year, more than 100 exhibitions were held during this time, including:
From 2009 to 2012, Rosiny worked as a specialist consultant on modern dance for the Swiss Dance Archive in Zurich, where she co-ordinated lecture programmes, acquired, amongst others, the Nachlass of Sigurd Leeder in 2011, oversaw a video project on early contemporary dance in Western Switzerland and, until the end of 2010, project-managed the fusion of the Archives suisses de la danse in Lausanne with the mediathektanz.ch in Zurich into the Swiss Dance Archive with branches in Zürich and Lausanne. It has existed in this new form since January 1, 2011.

Teaching in higher education

As a lecturer, Rosiny is strongly committed to integrating dance practice, dance studies and film. From 1994 to 2005, she led seminars on Video Dance and Contemporary Dance at the Institute for Theatre Studies at the University of Berne, and from 2006 to 2011 proseminars on intermediality, postmodernism, dance, theatre and performance at the Institute for Media Studies at the University of Basel. From 2002 to 2015, she was a member of the programme management team and a lecturer on the continuing education course TanzKultur at the University of Bern. Since 2016, she has been working there in the same capacity at the Institute for Theatre Studies on the newly introduced Master of Advanced Studies in Dance/Performing Arts course: "This unique Continuing Education Study Programme, with its interdisciplinary design and international network, will reflect the current state of research." She has been teaching Cultural Management Practice at Lucerne University since 2012.

Dance film programming

Rosiny curated, academically contextualised and evaluated numerous dance film programmes:
Rosiny was on the jury panel of the Hans-Reinhart-Ring of the Swiss Society for Theatre Culture from 2001 to 2006, of the German Video Dance Prize 2003–2004, the Swiss Dance and Choreography Prize 2002–2010 and the Dance Screen competition in Cologne. She also participated in the pre-selection for the 37th Dance on Camera Festival New York City and VIPER '01, the International Film & Videofestival Basel.
From 1995 to 2005, she advised the Migros Cooperative Aare on dance funding and promotion, from 1993 to 2010 she was a board member of the Archives suisses de la danse, Lausanne, and from 1997 to 2003 President of the Commission for Theater and Dance, Canton of Berne. Since 2009, she has been a board member of Teatro San Materno, Ascona.

Federal Office for Culture (Bundesamt für Kultur) Berne

Since 2012, Claudia Rosiny has been in charge of dance and theatre at the Federal Office for Culture Berne in the Department for Cultural Creation and has been developing the new national awards policy of the federal government for these areas, with the aim of recognising the quality of professional artistic dance and theatre practice in all its diversity and strengthening it on a national level.

Swiss dance awards

The Federal Office for Culture has been awarding the Swiss Grand Prix for Dance every two years, as well as a Special Prize for Dance , two awards in the category Outstanding Female Dancer/Outstanding Male Dancer and four Swiss Dance Prizes . In addition, the June Johnson Dance Prize is awarded in partnership with the Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation. The Grand Prix Tanz is awarded to honour a recipient's artistic career on the recommendation of the Swiss Federal Jury for Dance. The first person to win this prize was in 2013 the Swiss choreographer, artistic director of the Ballet am Rhein Düsseldorf Duisburg. In 2015, the award went to the Geneva choreographer Gilles Jobin and in 2017 to Noemi Lapzeson, Geneva choreographer and founder of Vertical Danse.

Swiss theater awards

In the field of theatre, the Federal Office for Culture also awards the annual Swiss Grand Prix Theatre/Hans-Reinhart-Ring, a Swiss Cabaret Prize and four to five Swiss Theatre Awards. In 2014, was the first recipient of the Swiss Grand Prix Theatre, followed by Stefan Kaegi – Rimini Protokoll in 2015, and the Zurich-based in 2016.

Selected publications

Monographs