Teaching began through my own need to understand movement clearly. Technique was often presented to me as something opaque or unquestionable, and I became committed to finding more direct, relational, and adaptable ways of learning. My teaching practice is grounded in the belief that technical training should create clarity rather than confusion, and that strong structures can support freedom, consistency, and the courage to experiment inside defined boundaries. I approach teaching as both a practical and relational process: building conditions in which dancers can develop precision, confidence, and critical awareness within the intensity of artistic work and creative processes.

In dance-making, many things are happening simultaneously, and the body is always present within that complexity. Contemporary dancers need practices that develop sensitivity: understanding when to use strength, when to release, and how to move between these states with precision. My teaching is rooted in classical ballet, but shaped through a critical and adaptive approach to transmission. Rather than emphasizing external affectation, I focus on the specificity of how movement functions. By breaking technique down into clear principles and technical fundamentals, I aim to make complex movement more accessible, reliable, and applicable to contemporary choreographic practices.

Whether working with set material or improvisational structures, I approach musical precision and rhythmic specificity as foundations for presence, curiosity, and individual interpretation. The rigor of the classical form remains central to my teaching, particularly through principles derived from the Cecchetti Technique, but the mode of transmission adapts to different bodies, contexts, and ways of understanding. I do not believe technique should demand sameness. Instead, I see it as a living practice that can support diverse artistic and physical experiences while maintaining structural rigor.

I developed this approach through intensive study with the late ballet teacher Janet Panetta (1948–2023), whom I assisted internationally for ten years in professional workshops, university courses, and with professional dance companies. Through this close mentorship, I learned how ballet training can be transmitted with both rigor and care, allowing artists from varied backgrounds to deepen their awareness of how things in their body works, and maintain a practice of constant learning.

I carry this work forward with the conviction that ballet must continue to evolve because people evolve. Forms sometimes need to loosen in order to return with greater clarity. Through attentive repetition and sustained listening, to ourselves and one another, technique can become not only a tool for performance, but also a way of shaping our artistic identities and learning communities.

Professional Companies

Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch

Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company

Norrdans

Cullberg

Landestheater Linz

Universities

Iceland University of the Arts — Teaching in the Bachelor Dance Program

Stockholm University of the Arts — Teaching in the Bachelor Dance Program

University of the Arts Berlin / HZT — Teaching in the Bachelor Dance Program

Zurich University of the Arts — Teaching in the Bachelor and Masters Dance Program

The New School University — Teaching in the Bachelor Dance Program

Independent Scene

ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival

Judith Sánchez RuízProfessional Contemporary Dancer Certification Program

Tanzquartier Vienna

Mousonturm Frankfurt

Profitraining Basel

Marameo Berlin

Gibney Dance Center New York City

Danscentrum Stockholm

ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival — Field Research Projects

• Bad Ballet (2025) with Anna Leon, Elizabeth Ward & Kevin Fay

• Certain Dance Circumstance (2023) with Lenio Kaklea

Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism — Workshop in the TA Fellowship Program

• Embodied Bricoleur Artistic Research Interdisciplinary Approaches (2025)

BACKPULVER Vienna — Feedback sharing and co-teaching

• Diffractive Dialogues with Malcolm Manning (2024)

• Feedback sharing workshop (2023)

Zürich University of the Arts — 3rd Cycle Junior Research Group for the PEERS Program & Artistic Research PhDs (2022)

• Epistemic Adaptations in Art & Research , a dialogue with VK Preston & Macklin Kowal

University Courses Taught

Ballet Technique
Technique Course

Functional anatomy forms the foundation of the technical study, emphasizing connections to both human expressivity and creative potential. The class focuses on initiating movement from the bones and allowing the muscles to function with greater efficiency, supporting a physically sustainable and artistically expansive ballet practice. As dancers engage more fully with the historical form, the Cecchetti method is introduced to reveal unexpected possibilities for dancers’ authorship — aligning personal agency with the rigor of classical training.

Embodied Bricoleur
Inter-Disciplinary Course

Embodied Bricoleur is a laboratory dedicated to exploring movement, pleasure, and technique as tools for collective choreographic invention and research creations. Highlighting sensual experience, the course centers on the creative process while fostering critical reflection on pedagogy and the transmission of knowledge. It asks: How can we remix, reconstruct, and reuse embodied artifacts — those familiar movement fragments, habits, and gestures — to generate new meanings and insights from accessible dance materials?

Rhythms, Colors, Patterns*
Inter-Disciplinary Course

This interdisciplinary course explored the relationship between embodied movement and musicality, bridging dance technique with sonic awareness. Moving between practical and theoretical approaches to the dancing body and the experience of sound, we framed rhythm as both a technical skill and a historical form of knowledge. Students engaged with musical concepts such as jazz syncopation, polyrhythms, minimalism, and silence through structured movement exercises, guided listening, and hands-on work with piano, drums, and other percussive instruments.

Co-facilitated with jazz musician and piano teacher Asaf Fleischmann

Ballet in Times of Change, or: Why the Pleasant Face?*
Inter-Disciplinary Course

This interdisciplinary course examined the genealogy of smiling and other codified facial expressions within the spectacle of ballet. As a conceptual and practical inquiry into normative representation and the dancing body, we worked with improvisational tools to explore the textures of the face and how certain expressions become habitual within this historical form.

Co-facilitated with sound artist and dancer Zen Jefferson

Yesterday Today Tomorrow: My Movement Practice*
Inter-Disciplinary Course

Investigating movement technique and creative process as pluralist constructions, this course engaged an intergenerational perspective on aging and dance, encouraging students to critically reflect on their personal histories of movement — within both educational and everyday contexts — and to incorporate these into ongoing research on mobility, coordination, and precision.

Co-facilitated with dancer and dance teacher Regina Baumgart

Play it as it Lays
Composition Workshop
(Title borrowed from Joan Didion’s novel)

Throughout the course, participants developed small-group compositions, modifying score-based directives, reflecting on their effects, and performing iterative versions for one another. The workshop emphasizes embodied inquiry, collaborative experimentation, and the compositional potential of attentive listening and choreographic writing.

Tanzquartier Wien Zine #4 (2026)

A Choreographic Calendar of Scores

Tanzquartier Wien Paper (2025)

Body and Performance Practices Index

Envelope 6 (2024)

Published Essay

The University of Applied Arts Vienna Research Journal

Envelope 5 (2023)

Published Essay

The University of Applied Arts Vienna Research Journal

University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna

Resisting Mastery (2025), Lecture Performance

Dance Resonance Artistic Attunement in Motion Symposium

The University of Applied Arts Vienna — Angewandte Public Colloquium (2025)

Performance Lecture, Doctoral Program in Artistic Research

The University of Applied Arts Vienna — Angewandte Public Colloquium (2025)

Performance Lecture, Doctoral Program in Artistic Research

ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival — Memorial Event (2024)

Put me on a Planet Where Everyone Looks Like Janet, a celebration of life with live performance, music, and talks

The University of Applied Arts Vienna — Angewandte Public Colloquium (2023)

Performance Lecture, Doctoral Program in Artistic Research

Zürich University of the Arts — Knowledge and Practice Sharing (2024)

Let’s Talk About Ballet, a dialogue & workshop with Prof. Dr. Friederike Lampert

Janet Panetta Repertoire — Exhibition on the Life and Work of Artist Janet Panetta at Garth Greenan Gallery NYC (2024)

Scholar in Residence

Angewandte Public Colloquium (2024)

Performance Lecture & Epistemic Decompression

Doctoral Program in Artistic Research

The University of Applied Arts Vienna

Society of Artistic Research —Conference in Tilburg the Netherlands (2024)

Soften and Make Space (2024), activation for Special Interest Group (SIG): Facilitation