BABAE - Joy Alpuerto Ritter + debate

Combining her roots in Philippine folk dance, classical training and vocabulary of hip hop and voguing, BABAE is a one woman interplay between the animalistic and sensual qualities of ritual and power.

"The essence of my work is about the transformation of body and energy - human and animal"

- Joy Alpuerto Ritter

This performace you can see within program 13th year of international contenporary dance festival TanecValmez on Saturday October 17th at 19:00 in KD Zašová

About Joy

Joy Alpuerto Ritter was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Freiburg in Breisgau, Germany.

In her youth she was trained in ballet, jazz, philippine and polynesian folk dance and graduated at the Palucca School in Dresden, Germany with a dance diploma. She started working as a contemporary freelance dancer with choreographers like Christoph Winkler, Anja Kozik, Heike Hennig and Yui Kawaguchi. During this time she expanded her repertory in urban dance styles like hip hop, breakdance and voguing and was active in the urban dance scene in europe.

In 2011 she joined Cirque du Soleil as a dancer and aerial artist in the Michael Jackson Immortal World Tour. Since 2013 she has been a dancer and rehearsal director of the Akram Khan Company and the company Wangramirez where she continues her touring life all around the world. She has been nominated as an "outstanding female dancer" (modern) in the Performance "Until the Lions" by the National Dance Awards UK. Joy has been collaborating as an associate choreographer with Akram Khan, Chen Shi-Zheng, "Florence and the machine" and created performances for the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance (SEAD), Dance Arts Faculty Rome (DAF) and Beijing dance academy.