Dancers from BODHI PROJECT and SEAD — Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance

American choreographer Susan Quinn made a name for herself as a solo dancer with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in New York during the 1980s before coming to Salzburg at the beginning of 1993 as a dancer, choreographer and curator and founding SEAD, the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance. The internationally recognized Academy now has around 100 students from more than 30 countries, offering a four-year training programme in dance and other postgraduate programmes in dance and choreography.

Susan Quinn founded the contemporary dance company BODHI PROJECT in 2008 in order to be able to offer aspiring dancers an ideal transition between their training and a professional career. During the 18 months that they spend with the BODHI PROJECT, participants, who are selected from all over the world, have an opportunity to draw closer to the professional field of a dancer in all of its manifold facets and to start their professional dance career soon after the end of their training.

Internationally acclaimed choreographers are invited to Salzburg by Susan Quinn and spend five weeks each as artists in residence working with BODHI PROJECT in an independent studio – the rat (research art tryst). Each of the productions they create is premiered in Salzburg – venues include republic /SZENE Salzburg and ARGEkultur – before touring internationally. Since the company was founded, it has given more than 150 performances at festivals and theatres in Austria, Belgium, China, Croatia, England, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States.

BODHI PROJECT can also be seen as a platform for young contemporary choreographers. To date it has enabled 45 choreographers to work with dancers in Salzburg. Each of the selected choreographers can look back on a career as a dancer in a well-known company such as Rosas under Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, the Hofesh Shechter Company, the Batsheva Dance Company and the Jasmin Vardimon Company or has formed his or her own dance ensemble that has achieved international recognition. All are selected on the basis of their special, interesting and independent dance vocabulary as well as for their different aesthetic claims.

Since 2008 around 55 dancers from more than 20 different countries in Europe, North and South America and Asia have been members of the company.