Reut Shemesh: ELECTRAS

In the organizer's words:

I am pain and joy; I am anger, security and death. I am guilt and grace. I am armed and I am a muse. I am milk, the beginning, silence, everything and nothing. I am hatred and revenge. I am misery and life.

Anger, android, ritual.Motherhood. In her latest piece, choreographer Reut Shemesh and her team conjure up the figure of the mother as a mixture of dragon, cyborg and nurturer: fierce and resilient, fearless and often tired. A body full of contradictions: exhausted and yet unstoppable, fragile and yet unyielding.

Reut Shemesh works with performers of different genders, ages and life experiences to challenge traditional notions of motherhood. Personal stories collide with societal stereotypes and clichés that often define motherhood, exposing the gap between lived reality and idealized roles. She explores the ambivalence of bringing a child into a brutal world, the desire to find meaning through motherhood, and the emotional strain of mirrored identities and gendered expectations within mother-daughter relationships.

ELECTRAS extends Reut Shemesh's exploration of the theme that began with her play Bad Mothers (2022), which was developed at Theater Oberhausen.

Reut Shemesh is an Israeli with Iranian and Iraqi roots, choreographer and media artist who has lived in Cologne with her family for over ten years. She holds a Bachelor's degree from the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in Arnhem (NL) and a Master's degree from the Academy of Media Arts (KHM) in Cologne (DE). Under the leitmotif of uniforms, Reut Shemesh deals with clichés and portrait art in her works. She sees identity as a story that we tell ourselves - and in which we ultimately rediscover, re-enact, dance and embody traces of completely different stories.

Her pieces have been shown at Tanzplattform Deutschland, Impulse Theater Festival and tanz nrw, among others, and have toured to various international festivals and venues in Europe, Israel and the USA. Her youth piece ULTRA (2023), a co-production with the Belgian production company fABULEUS, toured for two years through various cities in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Denmark. Her commissioned works include ANACONDA (2025) for the dance ensemble at Theater Gießen, ESTHER (2024), which most recently opened the tanz nrw Festival 2025, and Bad Mothers (2022) for Theater Oberhausen. She was also selected as one of three artists to realize a new project as part of the newly conceived programme Neue Auftraggeber: Kunst im Bürger*innenauftrag.

In November 2025, tanzhaus nrw Düsseldorf will present her latest piece ELECTRAS.
Reut Shemesh was a Factory Artist at tanzhaus nrw in Düsseldorf, Artist in Residence at K3 at Kampnagel in Hamburg and has received several awards for her work. She regularly gives lectures at various colleges and universities and has published the book Symmetry, Alibis and Intuition together with dramaturge Matthias Quabbe, which deals with her choreographic methodology and language.

She currently receives top dance funding from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and a four-year project grant from the city of Cologne.

www.reut shemesh.com