UNE PENSÉE À ENCERCLER

Free admission

Pina Bausch Centre under construction, Bundesallee 260, Wuppertal

Bénédicte Billiet and Sophia Otto present the initial results of their current residency at the Pina Bausch Centre under construction.

Following Entre-temps au grenier, the production Une pensée à encercler (working title) is the second choreographic collaboration between Bénédicte and Sophia as mother and daughter. They explore the question of what the body remembers and passes on when new life is created – motherhood as a physical experience and the traces of past lives within the body of a new human being, birth, transformation, bonding and detachment.

What do we bring into our lives from previous generations, what remains, and what do we wish to pass on? What memories does our body store?

A small group of mothers have supported us in our research and will accompany us on stage.

This work is being created in collaboration with the Schauspielkollektiv Lüneburg, the Pina Bausch Centre under construction and INSEL e.V. 

In this showcase, we would like to offer a brief insight into our current and previous work and engage in dialogue with the audience.

Duration: just a small hour

Bénédicte Billiet was born in Lille, France, in 1954. After training in classical dance at the Conservatoire National de Paris, she danced with the Opéra de Lyon until 1975. Back in Paris, she joined Peter Goss’s modern dance company. As a freelance dancer, she also worked in particular with Dominique Bagouet, Jean Gaudin, Claudine Allegra and François Verret. In 1981, Bénédicte moved to Germany to join the Tanztheater Wuppertal under the direction of Pina Bausch, where she worked as a dancer until 1989. In 2001, she returned to the Tanztheater to lead rehearsals for the project Kontakthof mit Damen und Herren ab 65 alongside Beatrice Libonati and Jo Ann Endicott. She later collaborated with Jo Ann Endicott on the revival of the piece with teenagers aged 14 and over. From then until 2020, Bénédicte worked as a co-rehearsal director for the revivals of various pieces from the Tanztheater’s repertoire.

Sophia Otto was born in Wuppertal in 1993 and gained her first significant stage experience as a member of the junior ensemble in Pina Bausch’s Kontakthof mit Teenagern ab 14. After completing her A-levels, Sophia studied contemporary dance at the Centre for Contemporary Dance in Cologne and at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 2018. Since then, Sophia has worked as a freelance dancer for choreographers and companies such as José Vidal & Cía, Alexandra Pirici, Jean Laurent Sasportes, Theater der Klänge, XXTanztheater, Amanda Coogan and Sasha Waltz & guests, as well as a co-choreographer and dancer with the Europa Danzante ensemble and as artistic director of the Krux collective. She is also active in education and develops her own choreographic works in various constellations. In 2024, she worked as a rehearsal assistant on the project Kontakthof – echoes of ‘78’, a co-production of Sadler’s Wells Theatre with the Pina Bausch Foundation and Tanztheater Wuppertal, directed by Meryl Tankard. Together with Bénédicte Billiet, Sophia founded Cie Entretemps in 2019 to create the piece Entre-temps au grenier.