In her seminar taught at Freie Universität, Yasmeen Godder examined with her students methods for developing an open choreography. Together they developed a performance inviting members of the audience to participate, even with no previous knowledge of the choreography.

Yasmeen Godder was born in Jerusalem in 1973 and spent her youth in New York, where she studied at the Tisch School of the Arts and was influenced by the punk scene, before she returned to Israel. Her first performance Aleena’s Wall took place in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1999. In the meantime, her projects are performed in many countries around the world, including France, Australia, and Germany. In 2001 she received the prestigious Bessie Award for her performance i feel funny today. Since 2007 she has been running her own studio in Jaffa, Israel, where she organizes workshops and produces her own projects. In her research, she devotes herself to alternative forms of movement and different compositional and conceptual formats. Her recent works are driven by the desire to open her performances to changing perspectives and to engage the audience directly in the physical and emotional experience, without sacrificing the theatrical experience.

The Valeska Gert Visiting Professorship is organized in cooperation between the Institute for Theater Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, the German Academic Exchange Service, and the Akademie der Künste.