Rhys Martin graduated from Sydney University in literature and fine arts in 1975. He began his career in the theatre with Sydney’s pioneering underground One Extra Dance Company. In 1981, he moved to Germany via London, to join Reinhild Hoffman's dance theatre ensemble both in Bremen and Bochumer Schauspielhaus and touring internationally. Since 1986, he has worked as freelance producer, director and choreographer of dance, opera, film and theatre. Venues include Leipzig and Montpellier opera houses, the Alte Oper Frankfurt am Main, Düsseldorf and Bochumer Schauspielhaus, and in Berlin at the Hebbel Theatre Berlin, Maxim Gorki Theatre and Berliner Ensemble and Babelsberg Film Studios. His commitment to radical experiment evolved in a long term a series of highly experimental theatre productions created in collaboration with the fringe company, Jubiläumsensemble Bonn. He has created work for celebrated international contemporary music group Ensemble Modern, worked with leading jazz trumpeter Uli Beckerhoff and collaborated on several theatre productions with renowned composer Elena Kats-Chernin. His work was awarded first prize at the Unesco XII Choreographer's Competition in Cologne and at the Theaterzwang Theatre Festival in Nordrhein-Westfalen. He was recommended for a London New Choreographers Award and received a special mention in the Concours de Lausanne in Switzerland under Maurice Béjart.

He is currently professor of dance and choreography at the University of the Arts Berlin with a portfolio of over 12 new music theatre productions. He is founder member of the new Inter University Centre for Dance Berlin, where he instigated and now, leads the internationally acknowledged contemporary Master of Arts in Solo Dance Authorship. His research includes practice led investigations into the connections between performance theory and popular performance practice in extended social contexts. The latter has involved a series of diverse collaborations including an invitation from the education program of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra to choreograph the new orchestral work Swing Symphony, commissioned from and performed by leading American jazz composer Wynton Marsalis. The performances involved nearly two hundred Berlin pupils and students and were conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.

updated 25.09.2012