fot. Piotr Wręga
Katarzyna Kozielska (Juror classical dance and modern dance)
Katarzyna Kozielska, a professional dancer, who, after an incredible time spent on stage as a performer, moved on to pursue a carrier as an awarded choreographer with an opportunity to create many pieces for major companies worldwide. In 2001 she achieved a Diploma within the Advanced Training Course in Dance Pedagogy, by John Cranko Schule, Stuttgart, Germany.
She has been working with Ballet Master, Folkwang Universitat der Kunste (Germany) since 2019. Her credits as a choreographer include The Stuttgart Ballet, Tulsa Ballet, Hermès, the Czech National Ballet, YAGP, Chemnitz Ballet, Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, John Cranko Schule, Ballet Augsburg, Youth Project Japan and Poland, Deutscher Tanzpreis, Noverre – Society for Young Choreographers, YAGP Star Gala in New York City, Roberto Bolle & Friends, Gala de Danza, Mexico, Tokyo Star Gala, Ibstage Gala, Barcelona, Birgit Keil Gala, BalletNext, New York and others.
She was a Demi-soloist in The Stuttgart Ballet from 2000 – 2018. Her dance career includes leading and solo roles in works by Georges Balanchine, Maurice Béjart, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, John Cranko, Jorma Elo, William Forsythe, Michail Fokine, Itzik Galili, Marco Goecke, Maximiliano Guerra, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, John Neumeier, Márcia Haydée, Uwe Scholz, Christian Spuck, Peter Schaufuss, Glen Tetley. Specially created Roles: Alben (Marco Goecke), Firebird (Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui), On Velvet (Marco Goecke), Sweet Sweet Sweet (Marco Goecke), Two at a time (Cayetano Soto), Viciouswishes (Marco Goecke), and La peau blanche… (Christian Spuck).
Eligijus Butkus (Juror classical dance)
After graduating in 1999 from the M.K.Čiurlionis Lithuanian National School of Arts – Ballet Department, he was engaged as a dancer for the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre’s ballet ensemble. In 2003, he was promoted to the position of ballet soloist, and in 2010, he became the first soloist of the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre in Vilnius. He performed leading roles in classical ballet repertoire: “Sleeping Beauty,” “Giselle,” “Coppélia,” “La Sylphide,” as well as in many performances and projects by contemporary choreographers such as Krzysztof Pastor, Boris Eifman, Anželika Cholina, and others.
Together with the ballet company of the Vilnius Opera, he participated in concert tours across the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Japan, the USA, China, Latvia, Poland, Russia, Slovenia, Turkey, Hungary, and Germany. In 2006, he obtained a bachelor’s degree from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre as an actor-dancer, and in 2017, he received a master’s degree in acting and choreography from the same institution. He has choreographed the Dancing Songs Project (2011) “The unforgettable music of George Gerswin and Astor Piazzolla” (2014). In 2016, he received an award for Best Choreographic Debut for the composition “Black Floor” in the “Creative Impulse” project. In the same year, he was awarded the Lithuanian Golden Stage Award in the category of Best Ballet Artist. He is the recipient of many other awards, such as the Friends of the Lithuanian Ballet Society Award in Australia (2002), the “Opera Lighthouse” award for “Ballet Hope of the Year” (2005), the Lithuanian Golden Stage Award for the role of James in the ballet “La Sylphide” (2009), and others.
Since 2016, he has been the Deputy Director for Ballet Education at the M.K. Čiurlionis Lithuanian National School of Arts.
Dawid Trzensimiech (Juror classical dance and modern dance)
As a student of the Ludomir Różycki Ballet School in Bytom, he won first prizes at two consecutive National Dance Competitions in Gdańsk and the “Città di Rieti” Dance Competition in Italy. He was also a finalist at the “Prix de Lausanne” International Competition for Young Dancers, receiving a scholarship to the Royal Ballet School in London, where he continued and completed his professional training. Immediately after that, in 2008, he joined the Royal Ballet, where he became a soloist four years later. On the London stage, he danced, among others, the Prince in Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker and James in Bournonville’s La Sylphide, as well as solo parts in ballets by Balanchine, Dawson, McGregor, Ratmansky, Tetley and Wheeldon. He also won the 3rd Prize at the International Dance Competition in Beijing (2011). He also participated in the performances abroad of the London company. Since 2014 he has been the first soloist of the Romanian National Opera, where he took the leading male roles in the following ballets: La Bayadère, The Le Corsair, Swan Lake, Don Quixote, Giselle and Cinderella, but also in La Fille mal gardée, Margarita and Armand, as well as in Frederick Ashton’s Dream and Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon. In 2016 he returned to Poland as the first soloist of the Polish National Ballet. He performed on our stage in the leading male roles in the following ballets: La Bayadère, Don Quixote, The Le Corsair, The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Chopiniana, The Lady of the Camellias by Neumeier and Mayerling by MacMillan. He also danced solo parts in John Cranko’s The Taming of the Shrew, McGregor’s Chromie, and in Krzysztof Pastor’s ballets: The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, Casanova in Warsaw, Dracula, And the Rains Will Pass…, Adagio&Scherzo, Moving Rooms, and Bolero. He has participated in international ballet galas in Ireland, Lithuania, Latvia, Spain, Norway, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and the United States. In 2018, he received the Jan Kiepura Theatre Music Award as the best classical dancer in Poland. In 2019, he became the principal dancer of the Polish National Ballet. From the 2023-24 artistic season, he received proposals from director Krzysztof Pastor to continue his bond with the Polish National Ballet as a pedagogical supervisor of the newly established PBN Junior group. He currently teaches lessons, individual classes for training in classical dance technique, and repertoire rehearsals for juniors, and also co-creates the group’s artistic program.
Minka Heiß (Juror modern dance)
Minka-Marie Heiss, a Frankfurt am Main, Germany born artist, who studied mathematics, sports science, and contemporary dance. She was a member of the ensemble at the National Theatre Darmstadt and danced in a work created by the Slovenian choreographer Iztok Kovac in both Munich and Berlin.
As a freelance dancer, Minka-Marie worked with Eugenia Estevez, Ana-Maria Edelmann, and Sara Buhr in Sweden, as well as with Ljuba Avvakumova in Austria. She also participated in various choreographic workshops led by the Portuguese choreographer Rui Horta in France and Portugal. On several occasions, she was nominated as a dancer and choreographer for the International Solo Dance Festival in Stuttgart. In 2004 Minka-Marie established her own dance company Hausgemacht with which she toured across Germany and abroad up until 2015. In 2008 she received for her artistic work the Isadora Award from the Iwanson-Sixt Foundation.
Since 2000 Heiss has been a professor of contemporary dance at the Iwanson International School of Contemporary Dance in Munich. In July 2010, she was selected as a choreographer for the Swiss International Master Course in Choreography (SIWIC) under the artistic direction of Reinhild Hoffmann in Zurich, Switzerland. She also created and presented various choreographic works at the Tanzhaus Zurich. In 2012, as part of Risk to Fall production staged at the Theater Die Tonne in Reutlingen, Minka-Marie created work for the Ballett Pforzheim under the choreographic leadership of James Sutherland. In 2015 she was a choreographer in residence at the Choreographisches Zentrum Heidelberg.
Heiss regularly produces choreographies for the company Strado Danza in Ulm, a company directed by Domenico Strazzeri. She is a guest lecturer for the ballet company at the Nationaltheater München, the Nationaltheater Darmstadt, the Nationaltheater Linz in Austria, the Theater Heidelberg – Nanine Linning, Norrdans, the Theater Boras in Sweden, a teacher at The International Summer Dance Festival in Poland, and RECOIL – movement through the mind in Stockholm. She is also a lecturer at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Mannheim.
In 2022, her choreography Le (mas)sacre du printemps, 29 mai 1913 was presented at the Olympiazentrum in Munich as part of the Superbloom Festival.