Choreographer Christian Spuck receives the German Dance Award 2026.
Butoh dancer Tadashi Endo is posthumously honoured with a lifetime achievement award.
Prof. Dr Gabriele Brandstetter, Professor of Dance Studies, receives the award for outstanding development in dance.
The German Dance Award honours outstanding dance personalities in Germany. In spring, the jury selected the winners for 2026.
The German Dance Award 2026 for Christian Spuck is endowed with €20,000. The award for Prof. Dr Gabriele Brandstetter is associated with a grant of €5,000. Tadashi Endo, who died on 25 May 2025, will be honoured posthumously.
The German Dance Award and the awards will be presented on Saturday, 28 February 2026 at the Aalto-Theater Essen.
The jury of the German Dance Award (jury chair Dr Adriana Almeida Pees) has selected the winner and the honours from numerous proposals submitted by associations, institutions and dance professionals.
FROM THE JURY STATEMENTS
The jury honours Christian Spuck with the German Dance Award for his courageous, clear and outstandingly successful work with the Staatsballett Berlin!
Even before Christian Spuck took over as Artistic Director of the Staatsballett, audiences in Stuttgart, Zurich and around the world knew him as a choreographer with a great deal of artistic talent. Christian Spuck was trained in the John Cranko tradition, gained experience in the contemporary language of movement, for example with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, established himself as a choreographer at numerous theatres, worked successfully as an opera director of great composers from the Baroque to the present day and was celebrated as director of the Zurich Ballet.
In Berlin, Christian Spuck chose a sympathetic approach that attracted audiences to the performances and gave the Berlin company the chance to change its style: as an artist and advocate of the arts at the same time, Christian Spuck is able to combine the long familiar with the still uncertain in the shortest possible time. At the same time, new dialogue formats with audiences and artists get to the bottom of questions about the uncomfortable. Spuck remains in conversation, in dialogue with people. He shapes and pursues this path with the intuition of a dancer, the curiosity of a choreographer and the vision of an artistic director.
The jury of the German Dance Award honours Prof. Dr. Gabriele Brandstetter with the award for outstanding development in dance.
Gabriele Brandstetter is undoubtedly the pioneer of dance studies. Her great, internationally recognized achievement is the establishment of the subject as an independent university discipline. In her publications, but also in the research projects, exhibitions, conferences and festivals for which she is responsible, dance never coagulates into mere theory; it always remains a living movement.
The central place that dance studies has acquired in the realm of the arts and humanities over the decades is inextricably linked to the name of Gabriele Brandstetter.
For his work in the art of Butoh dance, the jury of the German Dance Award is posthumously honouring Tadashi Endo with the Lifetime Achievement Award.
Tadashi Endo is a great master and teacher of Butoh. With Tadashi Endo, his MAMU Festival and the Butoh Centrum MAMU, dance has found space and perception, a home and a centre in Germany. From here, he has inspired dancers in Germany and Europe and taken his art out into the world.
As artificial as his dance is, Tadashi Endo's art is closely connected to the world we live in. His pieces deal with the pandemic, war and drowning people in the Mediterranean. They are about the search for the soul of humanity, about human solidarity, about the path to a great community.
Tadashi Endo died on 25 May 2025 and will be honoured posthumously.
AWARD CEREMONY AND DANCE GALA
For the first time, the award ceremony will not take place at the beginning of the theatre season, but at the beginning of spring. This creates a better organisational situation for the host theatre, for the Dachverband Tanz as organiser and for the invited ensembles, free from the density of premieres at the start of the season.
The award ceremony will take place as part of a dance gala on Saturday, 28 February 2026 at 7 p.m. in the Aalto-Theater Essen.
Advance ticket sales for the event have already begun via the Ticket Centre of the Theater und Philharmonie Essen.
The detailed programme for the dance gala will be published in autumn 2025. The event will be translated into German sign language.
On the day before the gala, Friday 27 February 2026, the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland will host the ‘Tanzpreis Kultursalon’ - an opportunity to talk to Christian Spuck and Gabriele Brandstetter.
INFORMATION AND CONTACT
The German Dance Award is supported by the City of Essen, the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the Essen Cultural Foundation and the Norbert Lammert Foundation as well as other donors and sponsors.
Detailed information on the award winners and the honourees: www.deutschertanzpreis.de
Organisation of the German Dance Award
Dachverband Tanz Deutschland e.V.
Kunstquartier Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2
D-10997 Berlin
www.dachverband-tanz.de
www.deutschertanzpreis.de