Kjara Wurst is a Slovene/American choreographer and teacher working based in Dublin, working also in Ljubljana and Washington DC. She is combining technically stylized classical ballet, broken lines of contemporary ballet, and the fluidity of contemporary dance. Her choreographies emphasize interpretation filled with the suggestiveness of everyday movement, exposing humanity within the dancers.
She has choreographed for The Washington Ballet, Slovene National Ballet, KDP Contemporary Ballet, The Washington School of Ballet, University of Minnesota, Maryland Youth Ballet, Metropolitan Youth Ballet, APT, Dissonance Dance Theatre, Danzante, Triennale di Milano, Slovene National Ballet Conservatory ...
In 2010 she founded KDP, a project-based contemporary ballet company for young dancers, to create more opportunities for stage experience and her dancers/students have gone on to perform with the Batsheva Ensemble (Tel Aviv), Vertigo (Jerusalem), IT Dansa (Barcelona), Ecole Rudra, Bejart (Lausanne), National Ballet Theatre (Slovenia), Ballet Junior de Geneva (Switzerland)…
She completed her training with the Slovene National Ballet Conservatory and later studied with her mentor Fred Lasserre, joining SPP modern dance company under his artistic direction in 1997. As a dancer she performed nationally and internationally at Vienner Festwochen (Austria), Festival d’Avignon (France), Bonner Biennale (Germany), Bologna Festival (Italy), Intercult (Sweden), Marato (Spain), Lent Festival (Slovenia), Slovene National Ballet (Slovenia, Maribor), NY Summer Stage (USA), La Mente Artistica (Italy) works by Fred Lasserre, Jennifer Archibald, Matjaž Farič, Tina Dobaj Eder, Siniša Bukinac, Nijawwon Matthews and others.
Teaching and working with young dancers has become her passion very early on and she has now been teaching for over 20 years.
She is a faculty member at The Washington School of Ballet, Metropolitan School of The Arts, and Maryland Youth Ballet. She has also taught at The Slovene National Ballet Conservatory, George Mason University, Maryland Youth Ballet, Kaos Balletto di Firenze, TU Dance, DDT, Torino Centro di Danza, Slovene College for Ballet, Slovene Performing Arts School for Contemporary Dance, Scuola di Danza Balletto di Roma, Laban, The Washington Ballet Summer Intensive, Ariston Proballet Summer Intensive, Studio XII, JSKD Winter Intensives, Vibra International Dance Workshops and many other schools and workshops in Europe and the US.
She holds a formal Status of Choreographer and Educator by Slovene Ministry of Culture.
Foto: Aljoša Rebolj