Joy Alpuerto Ritter

Dancer and Rehearsal Director

Joy was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. In her youth, she trained at the Ballettschule Armin Krain and learned Philippine Folk Dance in the cultural dance group led by her mother. In 2004, Joy graduated at the Palucca School in Dresden, Germany with a dance diploma. She started working as a freelance dancer with choreographers like Christoph Winkler, Heike Hennig, Wangramirez, Constanza Macras, Heike Hennig, Yui Kawaguchi and Kader ‚Amigo‘ Memis. After expanding her repertory in urban dance styles, she felt connected to the hip hop and Voguing Ballroom culture scene in Berlin and has won prizes in several Dance Battles like Voguing out Berlin, Defipayette, Oval Battle and Funkin stylz. In 2011, she joined Cirque du Soleil as a dancer and aerial artist for the Michael Jackson Immortal World Tour. Since 2013, she has been a dancer and rehearsal director of the Akram Khan Company where she has been touring all around the world in the works iTMOi, Kaash and Until the Lions. In 2016, she was nominated for the Outstanding Female Dancer (modern) award by the National Dance Awards UK for her performance in Until the Lions. Over the course of her career, she has embodied a diverse vocabulary and developed her personal language of movement from a mix of urban, traditional and contemporary dance.

She has been working as a choreographer since 2016. Her experiences as a dancer in different contexts as well as her language of movement, which is shaped by diverse dance styles and cultures, flow into her choreographic work.

Since then she has choreographed at theatres such as Sophiensaele Berlin, LOFFT Leipzig, HAU Berlin, Tanzkomplizen Berlin, Theater der Junge Welt Leipzig, Barbican in London and in Orsolina 28. Her works have toured internationally in various houses and festivals such as Kalamata Dance Festival, Gender Bender Festival Bologna, Deltebre Dansa, Stanislavsky Theater Moscow, KLAP Maison pour la Danse Marseille, Lilian Bayliss Theater London, Biennale Seoul Korea, Romaeuropa Festival, International dance Festival Lublin.

With her solo work Babae, she has found international response as a Choreographer and is one of the Aerowaves artists 2020. Her work as a choreographer established new collaborations with Akram Khan, Mavin Khoo, Ballet Black in London, Chen Shi-Zheng, Riz Ahmed, Gideon Berger, Viviana Durante and Floria Sigismondi.

As a teacher Joy has been giving workshops at  IDW – International Dance Week Budapest, Marameo Berlin, Orsolina28, Ugnayan (online), Towards Vivencia (online) and has created commissioned works at SEAD – Salzburg Experimental Dance Academy, DAF – Dance Arts Faculty in Rome and Beijing Dance Academy in China.

 

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