Anna Süheyla Harms, an Australian dancer based in Stuttgart, Germany, has become the sweetheart of dance critics over the past year.
With her deep red mane of hair, long limbs, Turkish middle name and fluent German, not only is the German press mystified, it’s besotted with her.
However Harms has not only garnered praise from critics: her director Eric Gauthier has compared her with a win in the lottery and apparently audiences feel the same.
Harms was born in Adelaide and raised in Mt Gambier. She started taking dance lessons at the Maryke Dance Academy before moving to Melbourne at 14 to study full-time at the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School.
Unsure what to do after graduation, she pieced together an audition video, which she sent to various ballet schools in Europe. Leaving her home behind, Harms completed her dance training in Lausanne, Switzerland, at the École-Atelier Rudra-Béjart from 2006 to 2008.
During her time in Lausanne, Harms was immersed in the traditions of many cultures, as was the wish of director Maurice Béjart, studying as part of the course diverse disciplines such as classical voice, Commedia dell’arte, Kendo and percussion as well as African, Cuban, Indian and Spanish dance. She also toured extensively with the school and danced in the corps de ballet of the Bejart Ballet Lausanne.
In 2008, Harms’s professional career began as part of Ballett Chemnitz, a company based in the East German town near to the Czech border.
Speaking fondly of her time in the sleepy town, “I got a great overall feel of what it’s like to work in a theatre, where actors singers, musicians and dancers all integrate and collaborate.”
In search of new challenges and horizons, Harms auditioned for Gauthier Dance and was subsequently offered a contract.
Due to injuries in the company, she was asked to begin working there six months earlier than planned, in March 2011, and was immediately cast in soloist roles.
Eric Gauthier is a former Stuttgart Ballet dancer-cum-choreographer. He founded his company in Stuttgart in 2007 and since then the company has found its niche, both in Germany and abroad, touring programs often created especially for the troupe of 13 dancers.
Due to the structures in which Gauthier Dance functions, as a resident company in an independent theatre, the company continues to be accessible and marketable on the one hand, yet has the freedom to experiment on the other. This, together with the much praised humour of the director, dancers and repertoire alike, have proven to be a winning combination.
Harms’s goal has always been to dance pieces from a range of choreographers, with a particular interest in being part of the creative process. In Stuttgart, she has graced the stage in works from Hans van Manen, Jirí Bubenícek, Jirí Kilián, Mauro Bigonzetti and Stephan Thoss, to name a few. “It’s the perfect company for me,” she says.
The Deutscher Theaterpreis DER FAUST (German Theatre Prize THE FAUST) is a rather lengthy name for the most prestigious annual awards ceremony recognising excellence on German stages. Comparable to the Academy Awards in terms of the nomination and voting procedures, the unusual looking trophies are presented in eight categories.
Following Gauthier Dance’s success in 2011, as the recipient of the Best Choreography gong for Christian Spuck’s Poppea//Poppea, the company found itself in November, 2013, once again in the spotlight.
Anna won the Best Dancer award for her part in the production “Future 6”, a mixed bill consisting of six pieces by up-and-coming choreographers, four of which Harms was cast in.
When asked on a German radio show she feels about her recent accolade, she replied humbly, “It’s a confirmation that I’ve taken the right path and everything is going well.”
Acknowledging the responsibility that comes with such a title, she only hopes “to keep on learning, bettering herself” and to continue mastering her craft.
- - LUKE AARON FORBES
This article was first published in the June-July 2014 issue of Dance Australia magazine.