About Lior Shneior / Upcoming / Projects / Contact / DE

Choreographer – Movement director – Teacher

What moves me? What moves other people? How do I find an appropriate form for this? A dynamic image. We have two legs, two arms, shoulders and knees. We are different bodies. How do individual dancers position themselves within the group? It’s a delicate balance between togetherness and personal space, between cooperation and self-expression. Together with often very different people, a wild mix of characters, stories and cultures, of aesthetics and dance styles, I explore spaces, on theater and opera stages, on the streets and on dance floors, in video clips and in a virtual context.

Since 2012 I live and work in Berlin. Since then, my dance pieces and choreographies for theater and opera productions have been shown at Berliner Ensemble, Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, Theater der Jungen Welt in Leipzig, the Suzanne Dellal Center in Tel Aviv and 92 street Y in New York. I have worked as a guest teacher at various academies and universities, festivals and dance institutes in Germany, the USA, Switzerland and Israel. After studying dance at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, I received a DAAD Choreography Scholarship in New York. There I trained with the Bill T. Jones Company, worked with photographer David Lachapelle, danced masterpieces by modern dance pioneer Anna Soklow and presented my first own choreographies.

Choreography can be reduced to interactions of body, form and space. Choreographic composition is open to a wide range of contexts: a fashion show, a hip-hop freestyle in a video clip, a stage scene with actors or opera singers, to work in a community context or animated avatars. Combining these elements, I created the semi-digital dance opera Cleo for dancers, soprano, mummies and avatars in 2022/23.

As founder and artistic director of the Berlin-based project BERLIN MOVES, I have been working with numerous dancers, young movers from the urban dance scene, media artists, fashion designers and musicians since 2016. We form a unique bridge from pop culture and street dance to classical music and dance, from high culture to underground and to institutions like Berliner Ensemble, Berlin State Opera and clubs like Alte Münze, Jonny Knüppel and Arena. BERLIN MOVES works with interdisciplinary productions and workshops across borders of disciplines at the interface of dance, theatre and media art with a focus on accessibility and participation.

As a pedagogue I am constantly working on my own method of teaching movement and choreography. In 2017 I published (together with my co-author Maike Plath) “Das Methoden Repertoire Tanz und Bewegung” with Beltz Verlag. My method offers a spectrum of simple to complex tools for choreographic work. It offers a way to make the language of dance easily accessible to amateurs or children and teenagers. I give inputs and workshops on my method for choreographers, dancers, actors, dance and theatre teachers and students.

Theaters (selection)
choreography (own productions and collaborations):

Berliner Ensemble (Berlin, DE)
Staatsoper Unter den Linden (Berlin, DE)
Theater der Jungen Welt (Leipzig, DE)
Suzanne Dellal Centre (Tel Aviv, ISR)
Klein Theater (Luzern, CH)
Südpol (Luzern, CH)
92 Street Y (NYC, USA)
CPR – Brooklyn (NYC, USA)
Judson Church (NYC, USA)
Proctors Theatre (NY, USA)
Riverside Theatre (NYC, USA)

Academies, Institutes and Dance Centers (Selection)
Workshop leader and guest teacher:

Academy for Teacher Training and Leadership (Dillingen, DE)
UDK – Berlin University of the Arts (Berlin, DE)
Evangelische Hochschule (Berlin, DE)
“Theater Tage am See” Festival (Friedrichshafen, DE)
Musik Schule (Hannover, DE)
Tanec Praha Dance centre (Prague, CZ)
Various workshops for students and teachers in Germany, Israel, Switzerland, and USA