About me
Johanna Spies, a Madrid, Berlin and Hamburg based artist, was born and raised in Hamburg, Germany, where she started training in dance at the age of 3 years. After graduating from the Erika Klütz Schule as a qualified dance teacher, she moved to Leeds, England, to continue her dance practice at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, where she graduated in 2022 with a First-Class Honours.
Throughout her studies, Johanna collaborated with renowned choreographers and companies, including Akram Khan, Joseph Mercier, Phil Sanger, Excessive Human Collective, Thick & Tight Dance Theatre, and Vocab Dance Company. These experiences, alongside her own artistic exploration, have profoundly shaped her approach to choreography and curation.
Johanna’s creative practice focuses on blending movement, text, and interactive elements to create immersive performance experiences. One of her recent projects, The Quest, premiered at the WHOLE Festival 2024 in Berlin. This evolving art installation invite participants into The Playground, a curated space filled with stylized every day and queer objects. Equipped with headphones and guided by pre-recorded audio tracks, participants engaged in a 25-minute collective journey, interacting with the objects and each other. The project explored themes of identity, community, and shared experience.
Johanna has presented her work at festivals such as Hop’s & Bop’s (’22, England), Flockfest (’22, England), Dance.Impro.Space (’23, Madrid), and ONE MORE NIGHT TO SHOW (’23, Madrid). She is currently working with the collective Cia Monica Arroyo in Madrid and the artist group behind the dialogia! Festival in Hämeenlinna, Finland.
In addition to her choreographic projects, Johanna regularly organizes workshops in Hamburg and Berlin, which serve as spaces for experimentation and community-building. Since early 2024, she has also been a guest lecturer in Cunningham Technique and Choreography at the Erika Klütz School and Kampnagel in Hamburg. Her background as a certified Power Vinyasa Yoga teacher and her ongoing Pilates training further inform her holistic approach to movement and creation.
Bachelor of Arts - Northern School of Contemporary Dance
2019 - 2022
Dance Education - Erika Klütz Schule Hamburg
2016 - 2019