Malou Airaudo

French dancer, choreographer and dance pedagogue Malou Airaudo (Marseille, 1948) was only eight years old when she began dancing with the Opéra de Marseille. At the age of seventeen, she joined the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo, where she became a soloist alongside Léonide Massine. In 1968 she transferred to Françoise Adret’s Ballet-Théâtre Contemporain. Two years later she met Pina Bausch in New York. She returned to Germany and, in 1973, joined the newly founded Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. Airaudo became one of the key figures of the ensemble and starred in various productions, such as Iphigenie auf Tauris, Orpheus und Eurydike, Café Müller and Le Sacre du Printemps. She was also a founding member of the Parisian dance company La Main, along with Jacques Patarozzi, Dominique Mercy, Helena Pikon, Dana Sapiro and worked with choreographer Carolyn Carlson at the Teatrodanza La Fenice in Venice. Between 1984 and 2018 she taught at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen-Werden, and in 2012 she became director of the university’s Institute of Contemporary Dance. Her choreographies include Le jardin des souvenirs, Jane, Je voudrais tant, Black Is the Color, Schwarze Katze and If You Knew, created for companies such as the Folkwang Tanzstudio, the Ballet de Nancy, the Venice Biennale, the Pottporus Renegade Theatre, the Ballet de Genève and theBallet du Nord – Centre Chorégraphique National. Airaudo also appeared in the films Hable con ella (2002, dir. Pedro Almodóvar) and Pina (2011, dir. Wim Wenders).