Christine Kono
I met Christine when she was the Balletmeister at the Joachim Schlömer Tanztheater in Weimar. We collaborated on Hochland and Lissabon Project. After I moved back to Paris, where she also lives, we started meeting every month with her dance partner Dimitris Kraniotis to improvise together. We wanted to take time without a specific project or performance date in mind. It was about exploring the connection between sound and movement for us. This eventually developed into a series of performances with the Ensemble für Intuitive Musik Weimar.
Christine Kono was born in California in the United States in 1946. In 1955 she began to study classical ballet with Igor Schwezoff and Harriet de Rea, followed by scholarships at Ballet Companies in San Francisco and New York. From 1962 to 1971 she worked with George Balanchine, Martha Graham, Kazuko Hirabayashi, Anna Sokolow and Donald McKayle, dancing for the Pennsylvania Ballet Company and Eliot Feld's American Ballet Company.
Christine Kono arrived in Europe in 197I and danced at Tanzforum Köln for Kurt Jooss, Christopher Bruce, Glen Tetley and Jochen Ulrich. She graduated in 1981 with a master diploma for teaching dance at the Folkwang University in Essen. She was ballet mistress for Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal from 1987 to 1994 and for Joachim Schlömer’s companies in Weimar and Basel from 1995 to 1998. She regularly taught The Forsythe Company in Frankfurt and Hellerau from 2007 to 2014.
In Weimar and Basel from 1995 to 1998, Michael von Hintzenstern and Hans Tutschku from the Ensemble for Intuitive Music Weimar composed the music for two pieces of Joachim Schlömer, “Hochland” und “Lissabon Project”.
This acquaintance led to collaborative projects in Weimar and Jena, in 2001 and 2004, with the ensemble as well as the dancers, Dimitris Kraniotis and David Kern.
Christine is a member of Dance On Ensemble Berlin.
She often gave classes for Dance On from 2015 to 2018.
In 2019 and 2020, she participated as a dancer in the piece, “You should have seen me dancing waltz.” Which was created for Dance On from Rabih Mroué :
Until 2020, she was a frequent guest professor at Ballet Preljocaj, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, for Hollins University Dance Master’s Summer Program and the Centre National de la Danse, Paris.
Since 1999 she and Dimitris Kraniotis dedicate themselves to researching the foundations of dance and movement, based on the teaching of Jerome Andrews. They share their research with dancers, teachers and choreographers mainly in France. Together, they have created choreographic events which have been presented in France, Germany and Greece.