Gauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart is a young, dynamic company of 16 highly individual, versatile artists, directed by the dancer, choreographer and musician Eric Gauthier, who is also a charismatic dance ambassador with a great rapport with his audience. Set up in October 2007, the company established itself in the German dance scene with record speed and has long since become an international brand. The repertoire includes works by Gauthier himself as well as famous contemporary choreographers such as Mauro Bigonzetti, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Marie Chouinard, Sharon Eyal, Andonis Foniadakis, William Forsythe, Itzik Galili, Jiří Kylián, Lightfoot/León, Hans van Manen, Marcos Morau, Ohad Naharin und Sasha Waltz. In addition to the performances at its home base Theaterhaus Stuttgart, the company is busy touring to international dance cities including Toronto, New York, Tel Aviv, Venice, Amsterdam, St. Petersburg, Monaco, Québec City, Montréal, Berlin and Chicago. Gauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart is the German Highlight in the yearbook of the specialist magazine tanz 2022 as well as Company of the Season in the tanznetz critics' survey of the 2024/25 season.
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Parallel to its growing fame, Gauthier Dance has intensified collaborations with international star choreographers – above all with the Artists in Residence Marco Goecke (January 2019 to summer 2023), Hofesh Shechter (since summer 2021), Barak Marshall (since the 2024/25 season) and Aszure Barton (from the 2025/26 season). Even during the pandemic the company proved pretty unstoppable. In the winter and spring of 2021, an encouraging initiative attracted a great deal of attention beyond the dance world: For The Dying Swans Project, 16 choreographers, 16 videographers and 16 composers created a solo for each member of Gauthier Dance – available free of charge in the media library of the German TV channel 3sat. The response was overwhelming and even German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier informed himself about the project in a live chat with Eric Gauthier.
The success story continued with the concept evenings Swan Lakes (2021) with world premieres by Marie Chouinard, Marco Goecke, Hofesh Shechter and Cayetano Soto as well as The Seven Sins (2022), in which Aszure Barton, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Sharon Eyal, Marco Goecke, Marcos Morau, Hofesh Shechter and Sasha Waltz each transformed a mortal sin into a dance piece. They were followed by 15 YEARS ALIVE in the 2022/23 anniversary season and the four-part programme ELEMENTS (2024) with new creations by Mauro Bigonzetti, Sharon Eyal, Andonis Foniadakis and Louise Lecavalier. The 2024/25 season set further milestones with two spectacular new productions. Mauro Bigonzetti, Virginie Brunelle, Stijn Celis, Dominique Dumais, Andonis Foniadakis, Marco Goecke, Johan Inger, Barak Marshall, Benjamin Millepied, and Sofia Nappi congratulated Theaterhaus on its 40th birthday as a cultural beacon for Stuttgart with ten new creations for the programme FireWorks. In the summer of 2025, the hosts opened the COLOURS International Dance Festival with the sensational world premiere of Turning of Bones by the British choreographer Akram Khan.

In addition to the „normal“ performances, Gauthier Dance has been involved in a pioneering socio-cultural programme from the very beginning: the Gauthier Dance Mobile brings dance to people who cannot come to the theatre themselves and visits institutions such as retirement homes, hospitals or homes for people with disabilities. Since 2022, Theaterhaus and Eric Gauthier have opened a new chapter in this outreach programme with the MOVES FOR FUTURE initiative – with the assistance of the newly founded young talent company. The Gauthier Dance JUNIORS//Theaterhaus Stuttgart inspire enthusiasm for dance in the next generation with numerous performances at schools in the region. What’s more, the JUNIORS also make a great impression with their own stage productions, which are in no way inferior to those of their more experienced colleagues.

Eric Gauthier
Artistic Director
Gauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart
Gauthier Dance JUNIORS//Theaterhaus Stuttgart
COLOURS International Dance Festival


It only took Eric Gauthier a few years to make it from charismatic soloist of the Stuttgart Ballet to high-profile international choreographer and artistic director of one of Germany's most successful companies. Not least due to his tremendous networking skills, star choreographers and exciting talents from all over the world regularly collaborate with Gauthier Dance – first and foremost the artists in residence Marco Goecke (January 2019 to summer 2023), Hofesh Shechter (since summer 2021), Barak Marshall (from the 2024/25 season), and Aszure Barton (from the 2025/26 season).

At the same time, top companies worldwide have taken Gauthier's works into their repertoire, amongst others the Staatsballett Berlin, the Stuttgart Ballet, Scapino Ballet Rotterdam, Het Nationale Ballet Amsterdam or the Ballet Nacional de Cuba. His tongue-in-cheek insider spoofs Ballet 101, Ballet 102 and ABC became international gala hits, danced by the likes of Roberto Bolle, Johan Kobborg, Xander Parish and Victor Caixeta. His latest creations: the touching pas de deux Les Adieux for Iana Salenko and Marian Walter, premiered in April 2023 at the Ukraine benefit gala Ballet for Life by Iana Salenko in Berlin, and in April 2024 Night on the Bare Mountain for the Bavarian Junior Ballet Munich. Gauthier is also known for his forays into other genres, for example with choreographies for the stage shows of panda rapper Cro, Philipp Poisel, Marianne Rosenberg and Michael Patrick Kelly, the cinema hit Mackie Messer – Brecht's Threepenny Film (2018) or the Grand Show ARISE at the Friedrichstadtpalast Berlin (2021). In December 2023, he made his brilliant directorial debut with La Fest, commissioned by the Stuttgart State Opera, in a music theatre production that became a repertoire hit. Moreover, Gauthier can now also be seen in front of the camera – as the presenter and dance expert of the SWR documentary series Dance Around the World, which takes the television audience to the world's great dance cities. Available in the ARD media library, the first season presents the dance scenes in Tel Aviv, St. Petersburg and the Netherlands, the second season London, Cuba and Montréal. Episodes on Scandinavia and Brazil are currently in production.
Personal kudos for Eric Gauthier include the German Dance Prize »Future« 2011 in the category Choreography as well as two titles in the yearbook of the specialist magazine tanz, as a Great Hope 2016 and in the category Groundbreaking 2022.

As if the meteoric rise of his company weren't enough, Gauthier has now also made a name for himself as a festival maker: In the summer of 2015, the premiere edition of COLOURS International Dance Festival, conceived by Gauthier and produced by Theaterhaus Stuttgart, took the public, the media and the dance world by storm. Another initiative by Eric Gauthier received particular international recognition: the award-winning The Dying Swans Project. The 16 solos provided 64 artists with work during the pandemic and resulted in 16 visually stunning video clips, that were available in the media library of the German TV channel 3sat. Even the German Federal President became aware of The Dying Swans Project. Ever since an exchange via Instagram chat, he has kept in touch with Gauthier, among others when Gauthier Dance performed during his state visit to Canada in April 2023.

As the son of a leading Alzheimer's researcher, Eric Gauthier has acquired an awareness for social issues early on. The Gauthier Dance Mobile format has brought contemporary dance to youth centres, hospitals or to old people's homes right from the very start. At the beginning of 2022, Theaterhaus and Eric Gauthier opened a new chapter in the outreach programme– with the Gauthier Dance JUNIORS//Theaterhaus Stuttgart and the MOVES FOR FUTURE initiative, which is now focussed primarily on schools and the next generation.
Eric Gauthier was awarded the Order of Merit of the State of Baden-Wuerttemberg and is a member of the board of trustees of the Alzheimer's Foundation Baden-Wuerttemberg.



BALLETT MASTER and DANCERS

Mark Sampson Ballet Master
The big Canadian faction at Theaterhaus has gained a new-old member! How did that happen? In autumn 2019, Mark joined Gauthier Dance and stayed with the company for four seasons before returning as ballet master in summer 2025 ...
Mark trained at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School. For his degree, however, he moved on to the more contemporary-oriented Juillard School in New York, which he left in 2016 with the Martha Hill Prize for Leadership and Excellence in Dance in his pocket. He got off to an excellent start with one of his home country's top companies: BJM – Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal. During his time with Gauthier Dance, Mark impressed in many parts, including a particularly difficult one: the portrayal of apathy in Aszure Barton's duet human undoing (sloth) from The Seven Sins. After returning to Canada, Mark worked as a freelance dancer and choreographer in Montréal, with, amongst others, Sylvain Émard Danse and Animals of Distinction. In addition, he taught at the École de Danse Contemporaine de Montréal and the École Supérieure de Ballet du Québec. Back at the Theaterhaus, Mark proved once again that he is not one to shy away from a challenge: he made his debut as ballet master with Akram Khan's acclaimed dance drama Turning of Bones.



Luis Sayago Ballet Master
Born in Venezuela, Luis studied both ballet and electrical engineering before dedicating himself entirely to dance. After first engagements in his hometown Caracas, Luis moved on to Europe. Following stints with the Spanish IT Dansa Jove Companya and the abcdancecompany in St. Pölten, he was a member of Kevin O´Day´s and Dominique Dumais´ Ballet of Nationaltheater Mannheim for 13 years. In 2014, he embarked on a freelance career as dancer, choreographer and lecturer in the Rhine-Neckar region. He regularly cooperated with Unterwegstheater as well as projects such as ARTORT or HD moves in Heidelberg. From the 2019/20 season, Luis will be ballet master of Gauthier Dance.


Bruna Andrade
The native Brazilian began her dance training in Rio before moving on to the Mannheim Academy of Dance, thanks to a scholarship of the Birgit Keil Dance Foundation. Birgit Keil, both head of the Academy and Artistic Director of Staatsballet Karlsruhe, saw her potential and made her a member of her company. Bruna danced her way up to the top, and was appointed First Soloist in the season 2012/13. She did not only shine in the title roles of MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet, Cranko's The Taming of the Shrew and Peter Wright's Giselle, but also in the highly virtuoso Forsythe piece The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude. In 2014, Bruna was awarded The German Theatre Prize THE FAUST as Best Performer Dance. She has been a member of Gauthier Dance since the 2018/19 season, and her success story continues, with regular nominations as Dancer of the Year in the critics' surveys of the specialist press. The most recent can be found in the Yearbook tanz 2025, in recognition of her deeply moving interpretation of Marco Goecke's solo Infant Spirit in the Theaterhaus Stuttgart anniversary programme FireWorks.


Alexandra Policaro
American born dancer Alex Policaro began her training as a Kennedy Center Award scholar at the Alvin Ailey School in New York City, and later attended the University of Southern California’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance. Upon completing her education, she went on to dance with BalletX in Philadelphia, the Oldenburgisches Staatstheater, and most recently, Staatsballett Hannover. Throughout her career, Alexandra has performed works by renowned choreographers such as Sharon Eyal, Marco Goecke, William Forsythe, Jiří Kylián, and Aszure Barton. As she begins her time as a member of Gauthier Dance in the 2025/26 season, she is looking forward to some renewed encounters, as well as to collaborating with artists she has yet to meet.


Garance Goutard-Dekeyser
Garance is French but grew up in Tromsø, Norway. There she attended the dance branch of the Kongsbakken Vgs, a tradition-steeped school with an artistic focus. Garance subsequently moved on to Oslo to prepare for a professional dance career at the Spin Off Forstudium i Dans – with success! In 2021, she was accepted for the Arts Umbrella diploma programme in Vancouver. At the internationally renowned training centre, dance is taught under real-life conditions, using works by Crystal Pite, Marco Goecke, Fernando H. Magadan, Johan Inger and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, among others. In her last year, Garance honed her skills in the company of a famous local co-operation partner, Ballet BC Annex. Then she was ready for the next step – as a member of the Gauthier Dance JUNIORS from the 2024/25 season. And the one after that! For Garance's performance was so outstanding that, only one year later, she was already promoted to the main company.


Karlijn Dedroog
Karlijn's decision to dance professionally was made in Stuttgart – when she saw her cousin Anneleen on stage with Gauthier Dance. After that, everything happened very quickly. She trained at the Royal Ballet School in Antwerp and started her career with Dantzaz Konpainia in San Sebastián. The legendary springboard for young talent also worked perfectly for Karlijn. A year later, in 2018, she moved to the leading company of her home country – the Royal Ballet of Flanders under the direction of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. There she danced her way through the complete stylistic spectrum, from Merce Cunningham and Sharon Eyal to Sleeping Beauty and Spartacus. In autumn 2022, she will become, literally in her case, part of the Gauthier Dance family.


Barbara Melo Freire
The Brazilian left her home city Rio de Janeiro at the age of 13 for a scholarship at the State Ballet School in Berlin. Her extensive repertoire includes works by William Forsythe, Christian Spuck, Mauro Bigonzetti, Benjamin Millepied, and Xin Peng Wang. As early as 2005, she won a prize at the Tanzolymp Berlin. In 2012, she was awarded the Bajazzo as Best Female Dancer of North Rhine-Westphalia. Barbara was a soloist with Theater Rostock, the Mecklenburg State Theatre in Schwerin and most recently with Theater Dortmund. She joined Gauthier Dance at the beginning of the season 2016/17. Her virtuoso, high-spirited dancing makes her the ideal partner in Eric Gauthier´s humorous pas de deux Ballet 102.


Tuti Cedeño
Tuti, a Panamanian dancer, began her training at Academia de Danza STEPS before earning her BFA in Contemporary Dance at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee. She distinguished herself in international competitions such as The American Ballet Competition and The World Ballet Competition, and attended renowned programs including Springboard Danse Montréal and B12 in Berlin. In 2020, she joined Ballets Jazz Montréal, performing works by Crystal Pite, Juliano Nunes, Aszure Barton, Ihsan Rustem, and Andonis Foniadakis. Since the 2024/25 season, she has been a member of Gauthier Dance, where she debuted in a leading role in Akram Khan’s Turning of Bones.


Rebecca Amoroso
Early practice ... Born in Italy, Rebecca began her ballet training at the age of four at the Pavia Academy. At the age of 15, she took a big step forward when she was accepted into the famous Le Pôle National Supérieur de Danse (PNSD) in Cannes. Founded in 1961 by ballet legend Rosella Hightower, the PNSD remains one of today’s leading international dance schools. In their final year, PNSD students transfer to Cannes Jeune Ballet to gain stage experience under real-life conditions. Accordingly, in the 2022/23 season, Rebecca danced her way through a challenging repertoire that included pieces by Thierry Malandain, Carolyn Carlson, Renato Zanella, Filipe Portugal and Lukas Timulak. In the 2023/24 season, Rebecca became a member of the Gauthier Dance JUNIORS. Over the next two years, she made such an impression there that she was promoted to the main company in the 2025/26 season.


Sidney Elisabeth Turtschi
While she was stilling training at the Ballet School of Basel Theatre, Sidney´s great talent earned her the Study Award Dance of Migros-Kulturprozent 2011 & 2012 and the Cultural Advancement Award for Young People Basel-Stadt 2013. From the season 2013/14 to 2017/18, she was a member of both Richard Wherlock´s Ballet Theatre Basel and, for two years, of the independent company Carta Blanca Dance. Sidney danced in pieces by, amongst others, Stjin Celis, Johan Inger, Ed Wubbe, Richard Wherlock, Alexander Ekman, Alejandro Cerrudo and Hofesh Schechter – almost exclusively artists who also feature in the Gauthier Dance repertoire. The signs are good for Sidney´s start in Stuttgart in autumn 2018!


Andrew Cummings
Trained in the UK, active as a dancer all over Europe: Andrew attended the Knightswood Dance School of Scotland and the famous Elmhurst Ballet School before taking up engagements across the continent, first with Heinz Spoerli`s Zurich Junior Ballet, then the Greek National Ballet under Renato Zanella and the dance company of Theater St. Gallen. In the 2016/17 season, Andrew became a freelancer and danced numerous leading roles in a wide range of productions, amongst others in Cottbus, Lübeck and Linz, the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris, Frankfurt and Graz Opera, the Komische Oper Berlin and the Salzburg Festival. In January 2020 Andrew joined Gauthier Dance as a guest dancer.


Giovanni Visone
Giovanni trained in Florence, at the school and the junior company of Balletto di Toscana. In the 2015/16 season he moved to Germany, first to the Delattre Dance Company Mainz, then to the Staatsballett Hannover for six years. He remained in the ensemble after Marco Goecke succeeded Jörg Mannes und danced in pieces by Jiří Kylián, Andonis Foniadakis, Medhi Walerski, Nadav Zelner and Hans van Manen. His engagement in Stuttgart from the 2022/23 must have been meant to be. After all, many of the choreographers he worked with in Hanover create for Gauthier Dance, first of all Marco Goecke. Giovanni has also been very successful as a choreographer himself, winning prizes at the SOLOCOREOGRAFICO Frankfurt 2020 festival and the International Competition for Choreography Hanover 2022. In Stuttgart, Giovanni regularly shines as a superb dancer-performer, most recently in a leading role in Akram Khan's sensational dance drama Turning of Bones. As a demonic tribal elder, he presents his daughter with an impossible choice...


Luca Pannacci
Italian-born Luca began his training at ballet schools in Bastia Umbria and Milan. He graduated from the Scuola di Ballo del Teatro dell´Opera di Roma and was immediately taken on by the Ballet of Opera Rome. The Italian capital was to remain his home for the following years, during six seasons with the Balletto di Roma, one of Italy´s leading contemporary companies. There he distinguished himself in modern interpretations of the great ballet classics, including Itamar Serussi´s Giselle and as Iago in Othello or Rothbart in Swan Lake, both by Fabrizio Monteverde. Most recently Luca danced with the Ballet of the Hanover State Opera under Jörg Mannes. He joined Gauthier Dance in the season 2019/20.


Shai Ottolenghi
Shai received an excellent classical and contemporary dance education – first in his native Israel at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, the Jerusalem Ballet School and the Thelma Yellin High School of Performing Arts, then at the Ballet School of the Theater Basel. After graduation, he was under contract for four seasons at the Ballett Dortmund under the direction of Xin Peng Wang. There he also appeared as a soloist, among others in choreographies by Wubkje Kuindersma, William Forsythe or Wayne McGregor. Most recently, he worked freelance in Cologne. In June 2023, his project Merchaw Michja (Lebensraum) premiered there, in which he also participated as a dancer and choreographer. Shai joined Gauthier Dance in the 2023/24 season.


Arnau Recorta Ortiz
Arnau laid the foundation for his dance career in his hometown of Barcelona. During his time with the Jove Ballet de Catalunya, he already showed great promise as a two-time finalist in the Youth America Grand Prix. He subsequently moved to Germany for his dance studies at the the Ballet Academy of the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree and six years in the Bavarian capital, most recently as a Heinz Bosl Foundation scholarship holder in the Bavarian Junior Ballet Munich, Arnau became a member of the first generation of Gauthier Dance JUNIORS at the beginning of 2022. Thanks to his excellent performance, Arnau became the first JUNIOR to join the main company as of the 2023/24 season.


Stefano Gallelli
Canadian-born Stefano began his training at Elitedanceworx just outside Toronto. In 2019, he joined dance ensemble Moving 4ward and wowed a global audience as a contestant on the TV series World Of Dance, produced by Jennifer Lopez. Later that year, he received a scholarship for the prestigious Glorya Kaufman School of Dance at the University of Southern California, where he shone in a great variety of styles and works by William Forsythe, Ohad Naharin, Jiří Kylián, Justin Peck, and Kyle Abraham, among others. In the summer of 2022, he made his international debut with USC Kaufman at Stadttheater Fürth. In 2023 he graduated from USC with a Bachelor in Fine Arts in Dance – before moving on directly to the Gauthier Dance JUNIORS in the 2023/24 season. The next steps in his career proved to be just as prompt. After only one year, Stefano was promoted to the main company. In his very first season, none other than Akram Khan entrusted him with a leading part: in Turning of Bones, the sensation of the COLOURS Festival 2025, Stefano gave a powerful performance as a young outsider who falls in love with the daughter of the tribal elder ...


Chen-Chiang Wu
A real high-flyer! Born in Taiwan, Chen-Chiang studied dance at the National University of the Arts Taipei and the Hong Kong Academy for The Performing Arts. In addition to ballet and contemporary dance, he also trained in Chinese dance, acrobatics and martial arts. Even during his studies Shawn, as he calls himself, was showered with awards: Gold at the Taiwan Grand Prix IBC competitions in 2016 and 2017 as well as scholarships for the Escola de Dança do Conservatório Nacional Lisboa and The Gelsey Kirkland Academy of Classical Ballet New York. After two years of studies in Hong Kong, Shawn became a soloist with Theater St. Gallen under dance director Kinsun Chan. In the 2020/21 season, Shawn joined Gauthier Dance.


Shori Yamamoto
Born in Japan, Shori was trained at the Yamamoto Sanae Ballet School and the prestigious Hungarian Dance Academy in Budapest. His first engagement took him to the National Theatre Brno before his career really took off in Germany: He made a strong impression during his four years with the Kiel Ballet as well as in the three seasons he danced with Augsburg Ballet – in both companies he was awarded the Prize of the local Friends of the Theatre. Shori's extensive repertoire now ranges from classical (Mercutio, Rothbart, Prince Siegfried) to contemporary, with pieces by renowned choreographers such as Trey McIntyre, Cayetano Soto and Ricardo Fernando. In autumn 2020, he became a member of Gauthier Dance, and has remained an audience favourite. With Eric Gauthier's humorous solo ABC, he has been regularly nominated for Dancer of the Year in the critics' surveys of the specialist press, most recently in the Yearbook tanz 2025, in recognition of his superb double performance in the Theaterhaus anniversary programme FireWorks. There, he shone not only in ABC, but also in Marco Goecke's brilliant Mercedes Sosa homage Monstruo Grande.

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