JĀNIS
PUTNIŅŠ.
Based in Freiburg / Working internationallyI work where movement, image and live performance meet.
I am a director, choreographer and video artist based in Freiburg. My work moves between dance, theatre, film and projects made with communities.
I am interested in how personal experience becomes visible: in a gesture, a moving image, or the way people share a space. Across stage and screen, I work with the body as a way of telling stories.
The starting point is a person, a place, an encounter.
Movement, sound and images become part of the same conversation. Sometimes that takes the form of a performance; sometimes a film, a projection or an encounter outside a theatre.
Collaboration is central to this process — with performers, musicians, visual artists and people bringing their own lived experience into the work.
I explore inner experience through the body and the relationships we form: the tension between closeness and self-protection, the patterns we repeat, and the possibility of change. Breath, gesture, distance and touch reveal what words cannot yet express.
Working with movement, image, space and sound, I invite audiences to encounter these experiences for themselves. I am interested in how we see one another, how trust and control shape our freedom, and how art can make room for another perspective.
“What keeps repeating within us — and what allows another possibility to emerge?”
Experience & collaborations
Across disciplines.
More than a decade of work across dance theatre, performance, drama and participatory theatre, with an academic background in contemporary dance choreography, art and dramaturgy.
Part of the Aktionstheater PAN.OPTIKUM artists’ collective since 2021.
Collaboration at PAN.OPTIKUMOrganisations & collaborations.
- GRIPS TheaterBülowstraße / video art
- Aktionstheater PAN.OPTIKUMUNFOLDING, MISSING FACE, EMPREINTE, heimat:en
- Fonds INITIUMPakāpiens. Trešais stāvs, SATEKA and community projects
- Latvian Academy of CultureIMPRINT and Warharbour.Excursion
- Hochschule für Musik FreiburgSACRE I & II
- Latvian Puppet TheatreKatliņpauris / movement consultation
- Motettenchor LörrachDido and Aeneas
- KVADRIFRONSMoney Flies, Money Burns
- kNOT TheatreTake Me Home Vol.2
- RISEBA Media SchoolStep / Film
- I-dejas māja & K:13Līdzinieki
- Wohnstift Freiburgheimat:en
- Lazda Films & BangaKur, Jumīti, glabājies
Explore all projects