Tarek Assam

Tarek Assam studied and graduated in dance at the Cologne Conservatory. After finishing his studies he danced in the ballet companies of Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf, Staatstheater Wiesbaden and Stadttheater Pforzheim (Germany). In 1991 he began choreographing for the company. He worked for the National Theatre of El Salvador as a guest choreographer in 1993 and successfully took part in several international choreographic competitions.

Tarek Assam’s career as Ballet Director and Choreographer started in 1995 at the Nordharzer Städtebundtheater Halberstadt/Quedlinburg (Germany). The John Cage Foundation commissioned him to choreograph multimedia events for both the inaugural (2001) and second (2002) edition of John Cage’s Organ Project ORGAN II / ASLSP. As a guest choreographer he collaborated regularly with the ballet company of the Varna Opera House (Bulgaria). After restaging his evening THE WALL in Varna, he was awarded the Varna Cultural Prize.

From 2002 until 2022 he was Ballet Director and Resident Choreographer of at the Stadttheater Giessen (Germany). There he created an extensive choreographic repertoire of full-length dance productions and collaborations with international choreographers, artists and companies. Due to an artistic reorientation, he moved back to the Nordharzer Städtebundtheater Halberstadt/Quedlinburg in the summer of 2022 in the same position, now as Artistic Director of TANZ HARZ.

Tarek Assam has been invited to present his choreographies in Germany and abroad for many years., e.g. in Poland, Belgium, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Austria, Italy and China. In addition, Tarek Assam has fostered a dynamic dialogue with, and between, different dance languages, performance genres, fine arts and technologies, in order to develop and research new performance techniques and choreographic approaches.

Before Tarek Assam co-founded the TanzArt ostwest-Festival in 2001, he was Artistic Director of the Internationale Tanzwoche Eisenhüttenstadt (Germany). Under his artistic direction the annual TanzArt ostwest-Festival has taken place in the city of Gießen since 2003. As part of this festival, he has initiated and fostered numerous artistic exchanges and collaborative projects with international dance companies, theatres, educational institutions and cultural organizations, which continue to this day.