Johanna Heusser and Maxime Jeannerat
Foto: Sam Vischer
Johanna (*1994) grew up in Basel and completed her dance studies at the College of Contemporary and Urban Dance in Zurich in 2016. In 2022, she earned her Master’s degree in Expanded Theater at HKB Bern. Since 2017, she has been developing her own works, which have been presented at festivals and theaters in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, India, Turkey, and Uganda – including ROXY Birsfelden, Schlachthaus Theater Bern, Zürcher Theaterspektakel, Dschungel Wien, Theater im Pumpenhaus, Istanbul Fringe Festival, Khoj New Delhi, and Kampala National Theatre. She was awarded the Atelier Mondial residency in 2018, the DoubleDance Award 2020 from the Migros Culture Percentage, and was a finalist for PREMIO Switzerland in 2021. Her choreographic engagements have taken her to Schauspielhaus Wien and Münchner Volkstheater. Her work on Swiss wrestling was invited to the 2022 Theatertreffen. Johanna is the recipient of multi-year funding (2024–2026) from the Canton of Basel.
Foto: Massimilianno Rossetto Studio
Born in 1995, Maxime Jeannerat is an artist from Neuchâtel working as a performer and choreographer within the Swiss cultural landscape. He discovered dance through Hip Hop culture. Developing his relationship to freestyle, he regularly took part in battles. This rich style became the first foundation of his approach to movement, which he continues to carry with him today. He is a graduate from SEAD – Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance and has worked as a performer with companies such as Prototype Status – Jasmine Morand and Beaver Dam Company – Edouard Hue. In 2023, he founded the company La Méthode. The work of the company explores the unconscious mechanisms of the human mind through so-called contemporary dance techniques, the foundations of Hip Hop dance, and physical theatre.
Project
DROPS is a solo staging the body as a place of transformation. The choreography presents a performer whose level of physical engagement is shifting. He’s moving through a series of bodily states. Through effort, his body operates a metamorphosis, transforming according to the images that inhabit him, the moments of life he chooses to move through, the characters he embodies.
I am grateful to receive the coaching of Johanna Heusser in order to craft a very defined performativity through the body. The piece I imagine is requiring a specific somatic theatricality , which I think Johanna is a perfect match to guide me there, to make me dare to explore new faces of my creative process and find an overall thread for the work.