Oryx is a dancer, choreographer, actor, and facilitator, their practice blending athleticism with a wide emotional and scenographic range. Committed to embodying and articulating diverse physical languages, characters, and circumstances with precision and depth, they have developed a choreographic language that is experimental, physically rigorous, and emotionally charged.
Rooted in an interest in character, composition, and symbolism, their work centres embodied storytelling—crafting visual poetry through embodied speculation and speculative worldbuilding. Influenced by immersive theatre and performance art, Oryx approaches the stage as a condition-making apparatus, allowing events unfold in real time, and testing the body through duration, endurance, and presence.
Oryx has directed and choreographed for dance, theatre, film, and music videos, and has worked as a dancer, actor, acrobat, performer, movement director, choreographer, creative director, producer, dramaturg, and outside eye across interdisciplinary, experimental, and commercial performance projects and visual media.
Choreography
A central aspect of Oryx’s choreographic and performative practice is the integration of physical tools—such as gaze, gesture, athleticism, and presence—with symbolism and visual poetry. These elements function as generative acts through which imagery and characters emerge.
Oryx’s research frequently deconstructs and defamiliarises the image and materiality of the body. Choreographic and dramaturgical processes often begin with speculation—with a “what if” question—unfolding through linguistic and somatic worldbuilding into scores, images, and compositional structures that coalesce to form visual poems. In their own choreographic work, they draw on strategies of cognitive estrangement, to render familiar realities both legible and strange, activating the spectator’s critical imagination.
Through commissioned work, they draw on diverse and broad techniques from contemporary and street dance, acting, and butoh in order to connect to the movement qualities and backgrounds of typically dancers, actors, musicians. They use these various techniques to draw out images, movement qualities, emotions, and storylines that resonate with the individual and group, as well as the larger choreographic, dramaturgical, and visual concept.
Performance Art
Oryx’s performance works further explore specualtive worldbuilding, specifically in relation to more than human and queer embodiments, investigating how tools, scores, or constructed environments shape bodily experience and consciousness. One expression of this research is their butoh performances and installations, which often incorporate prosthetic or sculptural extensions; producing mutable, hybrid bodies within speculative environments. These works engage themes of more-than-human embodiment, mourning and queer death studies, posthuman ethics, and expanded practices of intimacy and sexuality.
Degrees & Diplomas
BA Liberal Arts: Literature, Cultural & Art History, Philosophy
Durham University, UK & Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
MA Dance Performance
London School of Contemporary Dance, London, UK
Diploma Contemporary & Street Dance
Motion*s Tanz und Bewegungstudio, Berlin, Germany
Movement Background & Skills
5+ Years Aerial Acrobatics, Physical Theatre, Corporeal Mime Training
2+ Years Floor & Partner Acrobatics
2+ Years Classical Acting Training (Meisner, Chekhov)
4 Years Muay Thai Martial Arts Training
14 Years Competitive Horse Riding
Residencies
2025 Hybridisation, P.A.R.T.S and Rosas Summer Residencies, Brussels, Belgium
2025 The Centre Cannot Hold, Observatorio del Placer, Barcelona, Spain
2025 Hybridisation, NOH Extended, Istanbul, Turkey
2025 Hybridisation, 90mil, Berlin, Germany
2025 Ventriloquy, 90mil, Berlin, Germany
2025 Normal, by Matilde Flors Usinger, Studio DB, Berlin, Germany
2024 Normal, by Matilde Flors Usinger, Observatorio del Placer, Barcelona, Spain
2023 Various Projects, PAS Experimental Arts Venue, Berlin, Germany
2023, 2024 Various Projects, The Palace Residency, Wroclaw, Poland
2023, 2024 Entropy, Crack! Festival Residency, Rome, Italy
Scholarships and Grants
2026 Actors Space Berlin Meisner Technique Further Training Scholarship
2023, 2024 Musik Fonds e.V. for Performance
2021, 2023 ÖPR and Neue Start Kultur Grants for PAS e.V.
2021 Becas Sandander Grant for Cultural History of Sexuality Research at Humboldt Univeristät
Selected Collaborations
Oryx has performed at a range of venues, including theatres, stages, clubs, festivals, and private venues across Europe: Hosek Contemporary, Glougauair, 90mil, Feuerle Bunker, Fusion Festival, Untitled Gallery, OHM , Säälchen am Holzmarkt, Urban Spree, Bande à Parte, Gaswerk Festival, Studio DB, in Germany, Waking Life Festival Portugual, Crack! Festival Rome, Zentralwäscheri Zurich, Noh Extended Istanbul, P.A.R.T.S. Brussels, Sotu Festival Amsterdam, Observatorio del Placer Barcelona, Palac Gorzańow Poland.
They have performed and collaborated with and for various artists, studios, and collectives, from visual arts, music, theatre, and dance: Orly Anan Studios, Amanda Donato, Phoneix Chase-Maeres, Matilde Flors Usinger and Normies Study Group, The Palace Collective, MOLT, Lena Becarra, Technica Collective, Human Margareeta, Johnny Questions, Alejandra Horsley, Haven Band, Rufus Coates and Jess Smith.
They have also participated in workshops from a range of choreographers, including: Damien Jalet, Amanda Donato, Edivaldo Ernesto, Dima Maslennikov, Kenan Dinkelman, Charles Auguste, Christina Merzani, Cree Bernett Williams, Akira Yoshida, Lucija Romanova, Kinetic Orchestra, Shared Levitation, Patrick Sperl, Alisha Kobyliak, Valentine Tzin, Saskia Assohoto, Roman Varava, Amalie Stilz, Marlene Foth, Teatr Zar.
Publications and Interviews
2025 Interview with Jess Musler in Photography Publication ‘The Fragile Blade’
2021 Essay on the Art Collection of Naomi Wilzig, Published by Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
Please contact oryxvlrn@protonmail.com for an extended CV, or booking inquires.