Sonia Franken

Sonia Franken has many years of practical experience in the fields of independent dance production and dance education. She initiates and directs various projects, training courses and festivals, including with Bundesverband Aktion Tanz, nrw landesbuero tanz, Montag Stiftung, the University of Cologne, the Kölner Philharmonie and the rehearsal and production venue Barnes Crossing. As a choreographer and producer, she works on trans-disciplinary formats and has received various awards in the form of scholarships, grants and prizes, including the Cologne Dance Prize in 2022. Artistically, she works at the interface of dance and the theater of things on themes relating to the contradictory relationship between humans and nature, ideas of the body and the absurdity of everyday life. Through the co-founding of various collectives (El Cuco Projekt, Polar Publik, Bauchladen Monopol), diverse collective processes also shape her working methods. She has been working at Aktion Tanz e.V. since 2024, where she contributes her many years of experience in the field of dance and schools as well as in professional support to the co-management of the pilot project Tandem Tanz NRW. She combines practical mediation work with cultural policy discourse in order to sustainably anchor and further develop dance in society and is active in various cultural policy functions. She has been a jury member of the nationwide Tanztreffen der Jugend for the Berliner Festspiele since 2023. She holds a BA in Dance Education with a focus on improvisation and composition (CODARTS/Rotterdam) and an MA in Dance Studies (ZZT/Cologne) and is a certified IOKAI Meridian Shiatsu® practitioner.