Editta Braun

Editta BraunEditta Braun (born 25 May 1958) is an Austrian choreographer, stage dancer, dance pedagogue as well as founder and director of the Salzburg dance company Editta Braun Company. She is known as a pioneer of contemporary dance in Austria and chairwoman of tanz_house, the association of freelance choreographers based in Salzburg.

Early life Braun was born in Vöcklabruck in the Upper Austrian Salzkammergut. As a child, she learned classical ballet and piano and trained intensively in gymnastics; she was Upper Austrian state champion in 1974.

From 1976 to 1982, she studied sports science and German language and literature at the University of Salzburg. She was also influenced by acting lessons in method acting with Walter Lott and by a dance project with Wim Vandekeybus initiated by SZENE Salzburg, where she learned to combine her artistic gymnastics technique with contemporary, sporty dance.

Artistic career In 1982, Braun founded the "Kollektiv Vorgänge" together with Beda Percht,

In 1989, she founded the Editta Braun Company in Salzburg, with which she has since produced and internationally toured at least one full-length dance piece every year.

In the field of dance filming, Braun worked with Othmar Schmiderer, Wolfram Paulus and Hannes Klein, among others, from an early age. Her short film "Collision", directed in 1993 by Othmar Schmiderer, was awarded the bronze medal at the New York Film Festival in 1995. In 2022, together with photographer and commercial filmmaker Menie Weissbacher, she brought the alienating Luvos beings from their body illusion theatre to the screen in the short film LUVOS migrations.

Braun collaborates with composers, live musicians and artists from outside Austria and the Egyptian director Mahmoud Aboudoma. With Jean Babilée she created the dance theatre piece "La vie, c'est contagieux" in 1993/94 in Paris and Salzburg. Since 1996, she has worked with Thierry Zaboitzeff, LUVOSmove® is the trademarked name for this very special, purely female body language which has also been the subject of scientific research since a colloquium in 2021 at the Anton Bruckner University Linz.

Since the 1980s, the decidedly political impulse in her works has got stronger. In 2011, schluss mit kunst with text contributions by Kurt Palm and Christian Felber, among others, questioned the meaning of artistic creation in the face of hunger, war, environmental destruction, extinction of species and growing inequality.

Braun is known for applying an intercultural mode of production: she frequently develops socially committed projects with local artists, especially in Asia and Africa, and contrasts their cultural, historical, and social identities with Central European traditions. Since 1997 she is teaching contemporary dance, physical theatre, choreography, improvisation and professional strategies at the Institute for Dance Arts of the Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz (Austria). and from 1994 to 1997 as a commissioned choreographer for the Vienna State Opera Ballet School. In 2006, she supervised the youth project "wintertime" at the Festspielhaus St. Pölten.

As part of her teaching activities, Braun developed a specific improvisation technique that combines acting and contemporary dance to create "Physical Theater".

Recognition

1986: Second Prize and Award for Most Innovative Choreography at the Concours Chorégraphique International de Bagnolet in Paris for Lufus for the Kollektiv Vorgänge 1995: bronze medal at the New York Film Festival for Collision, director Othmar Schmiderer 2001: Award for Best Direction at the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre for Nebensonnen 2014: Internationaler Preis für Kunst und Kultur der Stadt Salzburg 2017: Großer Kunstpreis des Landes Salzburg 2022: Prize for Best Ensemble Performance at the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theater