Hofesh Shechter

Hofesh Shechter graduated from the Jerusalem Academy for Dance and Music before moving to Tel Aviv to join the world renowned Batsheva Dance Company, where he worked with artistic director Ohad Naharin and other choreographers including Wim Vandekeybus, Paul Selwyn-Norton, Tero Saarinen, and Inbal Pinto. Hofesh began drum and percussion studies whilst in Tel Aviv and continued later in Paris at the Agostiny College of Rhythm. Subsequently, he began experimenting and developing his own music while participating in various projects in Europe involving dance, theatre and body-percussion. In 2002 Hofesh Shechter arrived in the UK.

His debut as a choreographer, “Fragments“, for which he also composed the music, was presented in Finland, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, Korea, the US and Poland, and won first prize at the Serge Diaghilev Competition of Choreographic Art. For his choreography “Cult”, Shechter received the Audience Award at the dance institution The Place. “Uprising” and “In your Rooms” were also greeted with great acclaim by audiences and reviewers. For the latter piece, Shechter received the 2008 Critic’s Circle National Dance Award for Best Choreography. He worked as a choreographer at the Royal Court Theatre and the National Theatre, to name a few.

Aside from his other work, Shechter founded his own dance company in 2008. With this company, he joined the performances “Uprising” and “In Your Rooms” together and expanded them to form a veritable rock concert – a concept which he also applied to “Political Mother: The Choreographer’s Cut”. This show refers to his first full-length piece “Political Mother”, which premiered in May 2010 at the Brighton Festival. In 2012, this production was presented at Berliner Festspiele.

In 2013, Shechter presented “Sun”, a coproduction of various international partners with a worldwide touring history, at Foreign Affairs in Berlin. Further works for the company include barbarians (2015), Grand Finale (2017) and SHOW (2018) with his apprentice company, Shechter II. At the same time, Shechter created the choreography for Nicol Mulhy’s opera “Two Boys” at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. His first choreography for the Royal Ballet, “Untouchable”, premiered in March 2015. As part of #HOFEST, a 4 week festival celebrating Shechter’s work in London, he co-directed Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice with John Fulljames at the Royal Opera House.

In 2016 he received a Tony Award nomination for his choreography for the Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof, and Grand Finale was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production in 2017. In 2018 Hofesh Shechter was awarded an honorary OBE for Services to Dance.

www.hofesh.co.uk

As of July 2018