Julie Shanahan

Julie Shanahan

was born 1962 in Adelaide, Australia, and by the age of seven had already begun dancing. It beckoned as a career choice; her mother ran a ballet school, teaching according to Royal Academy of Dance criteria. Dance therefore became her mother tongue. Following school she studied modern dance for two years at Adelaide’s Centre for Performing Arts. She was discovered by the choreographer Kai Tai Chan, who invited her to join his One Extra Dance Company in Sydney at the age of 19. She didn’t earn much, but Julie enjoyed this period of free experimentation. A second dancing job, in North Australia, allowed her to save a little money. Together with a friend who was in contact with Reinhild Hoffmann and her ensemble in Bremen, she travelled to Germany in 1983. Following an audition, Reinhild Hoffmann took her on. Although she only signed for a year initially, and felt terribly homesick, she kept renewing her contract and finally relocated with Hoffmann to Bochum.

Wuppertal in her sights

The physical proximity to Wuppertal brought her closer to the place she really longed to be. Back in Australia, in 1982, she had seen the Tanztheater Wuppertal and felt a deep affinity to this work. For a long time, however, she didn’t dare attend an audition. Finally, in 1988, Pina Bausch invited her to join her company. They worked together for 21 years, up until Pina Bausch’s death in 2009. Julie Shanahan danced in a total of 30 pieces, and was part of the original cast for 12 productions, starting with Palermo Palermo, her unmistakeable character leaving a lasting imprint on the oeuvre.

A multifaceted performer

She can be biting and sharp-tonged or, just as convincingly, embody utter desperation and helplessness. The breadth of the roles she can invent is huge, and as such she counts as one of the most distinctive protagonists of dance theatre. Pina Bausch’s physical language seemed already designed for her, and she can speak it with emotional depth. Because dance is her natural form of expression, she is not considering retiring from the stage. Why would she? For Pina Bausch, anything could be dance, and dance was independent of age, as her version of Kontakthof. With Ladies and Gentlemen over 65 with Wuppertal senior citizens powerfully demonstrated. Alongside this, as an experienced rehearsal leader, Julie Shanahan is helping ensure that the works are passed on to the younger generation in the same spirit they were created in. She worked on the production of The Rite of Spring with dancers from various African countries, a co-production between the Pina Bausch Foundation, the École des Sables, Senegal, and Sadler’s Wells, London, and on the production of Kontakhof at the Paris Opera. In recent years she has also appeared in works by Tim Etchells, Alan Lucien Øyen and Rainer Behr. In 2021 she performed in Robert Wilson’s piece I was sitting on my patio this guy appeared I thought I was hallucinating, including a tour, and since 2022 she has been on tour with the piece L’Etang, directed by Gisèle Vienne.

Text by Norbert Servos
Translated by Steph Morris