Heike Salzer

Heike Salzer is a German dance artist and scholar. She fluidly moves between performance, choreography, and site specific screendance. Her work seeks to discover the unseen, the in-betweenness and the things that are in transformation. Seeing the body as a way of knowing she utilises the visceral experience of tuning into the environment to inform, reveal and reflect on place and emotional geographies of individuals, communities,and society. Her transdisciplinary approaches are founded on collaborative working practices that embrace empathy, exchange, and a deep respect for emplacement. Trusting in shared embodied inquiry as a tool to empower change through making, she envisages poetic interventions that explore atmospheric presence/s through ‘being-in-place’. 

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Under the name of Salts she collaborates with international artists and her screendances have been invited to numerous festivals. In 2014 Heike founded the screendance company WECreate Productions together with Ana Baer (US/MX) jointly directing screendances and multi-media performances.

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She is the secretary of the board and European liaison of the International Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema (US) and has been a curator of the festival since 2015. She co-directed and produced Tees Dance Film Fest (UK) in 2015+16 including tours to Mexico and the United States.

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Heike has been a faculty member at the conservatoires Fontys Dance Academy, ArtEZ Dance Academy, Stedelijk Lyceum (NL) and The Icelandic Ballet School (IS). She chaired the dance department at Teesside University (UK) from 2008-2017 and has been invited to teach and choreograph at international institutions such as Dancehallerne (DK), University of Malta (MT), Texas State University (US), Slippery Rock University (US), Appalachian State University (US), the Icelandic Dance Company (ICE) and Michoacán University of Saint Nicholas of Hidalgo (MEX).

She is a Senior Lecturer in Dance Professional Practice at the University of Roehampton, where she convenes the MFA Dance and Embodied Practice, teaches on UG and PG degrees, and supervises PhD Practice as Research projects.

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Heike graduated as a certified Anna Herrmann Gymnastic teacher in Germany, trained at ArtEZ-Dance Academy (NL) and holds a MA Choreography from the University of Leeds (GB) / Fontys Dance Academy, (NL). She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and was awardeda PhD by Completed Work by the University of Roehampton (UK).

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