MALOU AIRAUDO
Born in Marseille in 1948, Malou Airaudo began dancing at the age of eight, at the Opéra de Marseille. At 17, she joined the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo, where she became a soloist working with Léonide Massine, before joining Françoise Adret and her Ballet-Théâtre-Contemporain in 1968.
In the early 1970s, she moved to New York to work with Paul Sanasardo and Manuel Alum, the latter choreographing the solo Woman of a Mystic Body for Airaudo. It is there that she met Pina Bausch for the first time.
In 1973, she was invited by Bausch to join her in Wuppertal, Germany, where Arno Wüstenhöfer, the director of the city’s theaters, had just appointed Bausch head of the Wuppertal Ballet (soon renamed the Tanztheater Wuppertal). Airaudo became one of the key figures of the ensemble, creating major roles in productions such as Iphigenie auf Tauris, Orpheus und Eurydike, and Café Müller, and dancing The Rite of Spring as well as in many other pieces.
She was also a founding member of the Paris dance company La Main, along with Jacques Patarozzi, Dominique Mercy, Helena Pikon, and Dana Sapiro, and worked with choreographer Carolyn Carlson at the Teatrodanza La Fenice in Venice.
From 1984 until 2018, she taught dance at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen-Werden, and in 2012, she became the director of the university’s Institute of Contemporary Dance.
Her choreographic accomplishments include Le Jardin des Souvenirs, Jane, Je Voudrais Tant, Schwarze Katze, and If You Knew, created from the mid-1990s onward for companies such as the Folkwang Tanz Studio, Ballet de Nancy, Ballet de Geneva, Ballet du Nord, and the Venice Biennale. During the last decade, she has also worked with Pottporus Renegade Theatre, creating work with break-dancers like Irgendwo and Verlorene Drachen.
Airaudo has also appeared in the films Talk To Me (2002, directed by Pedro Almodóvar) and Pina (2011, directed by Wim Wenders).
In 2023, she received the German Dance Award together with three other former dancers of Pina Bausch.