Katja Heitmann
Katja Heitmann (1987, DE) explores in her visual-choreographic work what animates humanity in our time.
Her choreographic work is characterised by an extreme aesthetic that contrasts sharply with human fallibility. Her minimalist and meticulously designed imagery confronts the viewer with a swirling stream of insights. This distinct, palpable tension recurs in all her work.
As a choreographic sculptor, Katja is constantly searching for the core of her material. Through radical concepts and thoughtful forms of execution, she strips her artistic material of all noise. Only what really matters is shown with astonishing sharpness. In every detail of her work lies the grand gesture.
Katja Heitmann wants to move her audience. Through her work, she constantly seeks interaction with society, with the city, with people. The universal nature of her work allows everyone to find their own entrance to the work. Katja Heitmann creates unique performance installations and theatrical exhibitions that appeal to an amazingly diverse audience and regularly move them to tears.
The jury of the Gieskes Strijbis Prize:
“With a completely original body of work, choreographer Katja Heitmann breaks through the conventions of modern dance. She deviates from existing categories and chooses her own artistic course and the own context in which she wants to present her work. Surprisingly, what seems abstract on paper or in words is embraced with great naturalness by a wide audience in her final performances. It is inspiring how she dares to trust her intuition, the beginning of an idea, without knowing when or in what form a project will end up. By definition, this makes it harder to capture her work in predetermined moulds, overly rigid grant formulas or calibrated theatre spaces. It is therefore her great dream to establish a kind of ‘artistic monastery’ (with no religious slant) in which she can develop her practice - without imposed limitations of space or time - with her dancers and an ever-expanding audience.”.
Katja Heitmann was supported by PLAN Brabant from 2013-2016. From 2014 - 2020, Katja worked in a multi-year partnership with DansBrabant. During this period, she made This is not a show, Selfiefy Myself and iNcorporeality (2014), For iTernity and iTernal Playground (2015), Siri Loves Me and Pandora's Dropbox (2017).
Since 2019, she has collaborated with Sander van der Schaaf on the multi-year art project Motus Mori. In 2016, Katja won the Prize of the Dutch Dance Days, in 2020 she was awarded the Gieskes-Strijbis Podiumprijs, the largest performing arts award in the Netherlands.For her latest work Motus Mori PERPETUUM she received the ILO Artist Award in 2025.
In 2026, DansBrabant and Katja Heitmann pick up the collaboration again by Motus Mori INSTITUTUM to co-produce.
