Jury

Esther Boldt works as an author and as a dance and theatre critic for different media outlets including nachtkritik.de, Theater heute, tanz Zeitschrift, Deutschlandfunkkultur and HR2 Kultur. She has also written essays on contemporary aesthetics in the performing arts for various publications and is co-editor of the three-volume series ‘Radical Proximity’, which was published to mark the 20^th anniversary of PACT Zollverein in Essen. She teaches theatre criticism at the universities of Frankfurt and Mainz and, together with Philipp Schulte, has been leading the part-time higher education programme ‘Akademie für zeitgenössischen Theaterjournalismus’ (Academy for Contemporary Theatre Journalism) since 2019, which was initiated by the Alliance of International Production Houses. She has served on various selection panels, including for the German Dance Platform 2014, the Else Lasker-Schüler Prize and the 2019 Autorentheatertage at the Deutsches Theater.

The choreographer, dancer, curator, speaker and activist Raphael Moussa Hillebrand was born in Hong Kong. He grew up in Berlin with German and West African roots. Starting out in the field of hip-hop, he completed a master’s degree in choreography at the University of the Arts – HZT Berlin in 2014. His work fuses movement and language, resulting in creative journeys through decolonial narratives that encourage audiences to stop and think. For over 20 years, he has been building creative connections with dancers worldwide as a member of the groups Battle Squad and Animatronik, as well as through collaborations with various arts institutions. As a creative force and founding member of the hip-hop party Die Urbane, he advocates for decolonisation, empowerment and cultural diversity. In 2020, he was awarded the German Dance Prize for outstanding artistic achievements. His latest theatre piece ‘2050 – Our Utopias’ premiered at Radialsystem Berlin in October 2024.

Hanna Knell studied theatre, film and media studies, visual anthropology and theatre and orchestra management in Frankfurt am Main and Seville. Since 2010, she has worked at Künstler:innenhaus Mousonturm, at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts and in the independent dance and performance scene in Hessen, among other places. From 2018 to 2021, she was co-director of the experimental production venue Frankfurt LAB while also, in 2018, being part of the senior management team of the site-specific festival IMPLANTIEREN. Since 2021, she has been working as an advisor at the Crespo Foundation, responsible for the fields of dance, art as social practice and cultural education.

Philipp Schaus is a dance dramaturg and curator. Currently he is working at tanzhaus nrw in Düsseldorf, where he curates the young talent platform ‘Now&Next’ and is part of the organisation’s overall programming team. He co-curated the programme series ‘dances of transgression’ (2024/2025) and ‘Raving Choreographies’ (2023), as well as the festival ‘Volume Up’ (2022) together with Olivia Hyunsin Kim, and the the festival ‘Moving Concrete’ (2021) together with the collective nutrospektif. With Sebastian Matthias, he developed and realised the research laboratory ‘Post Internet Dances’ (2023). He is co-founder of the digital climate art conference ‘#ClimArtCon’ (2019) and a fellow of the International Summer Program at the Watermill Center in New York City/USA. In 2023/2024, he was awarded the Marie Zimmermann Fellowship for dramaturgy. He has worked for the Gorki Theatre in Berlin, the Munich Kammerspiele, the Zadar Snova Festival in Croatia and for Robert Wilson.

Following her degree in general and applied linguistics, Melanie Suchy worked for institutions that fund arts and culture, including the German Music Council and the Performing Arts Fund. She later completed a master’s degree in music theatre, theatre and dance criticism at the Hessian Theatre Academy in Frankfurt am Main and has been working as a freelance journalist and critic since 2006. She writes mainly about dance, performance and theatre for local and regional newspapers (such as Rhein-Main-Zeitung/FAZ, Wiesbadener Kurier), for trade journals (tanz, Die Deutsche Bühne) and internet portals, as well as for festival publications, from her home bases in Frankfurt am Main and Düsseldorf. She has been the editor of the Festschriften for the German Dance Award since 2018 and is a regular member of selection panels for awards, funding programmes and festivals, including the German Dance Platforms 2010 and 2022, and Augenblick Mal! 2015. She also teaches a course on ‘Tanz aktuell’ at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen.