Ihsan Rustem
Choreographer
Ihsan Rustem was born in London, where he trained at the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance. He began his professional career at the age of 17, joining Matthew Bourne’s Adventures in Motion Pictures, followed by engagements with the Ballet Theater of Munich (Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz) and Introdans in the Netherlands. In 2007, he moved to Switzerland and was a founding member of both the Stadttheater Bern Ballet and the Tanz Luzerner Theater.
During this period, Rustem originated roles in creations by Wayne McGregor, Hofesh Shechter, Alexander Ekman, Matthew Bourne, Stijn Celis, Patrick Delcroix, Cayetano Soto, Felix Landerer et Guilherme Botelho, and worked with choreographers Mats Ek, Jiří Kylián, Paul Lightfoot and Sol León, Hans van Manen and William Forsythe, amongst others.
In 2010, Sarah Slipper invited him to create State of Matter for the Northwest Dance Project in Portland, a piece that won both the Sadler’s Wells Global Dance Contest and the Audience Choice Award at the 25th International Competition for Choreographers Hannover. In 2015, Ihsan Rustem has been appointed resident choreographer for Northwest Dance Project. He is also the former Artistic director of the Dance Art Studio Balletschule Luzern in Switzerland, and currently serves it as Artistic advisor.
Ihsan Rustem was the 2014 recipient of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s International Commissioning Project and a winner of Whim W’him’s inaugural Choreographic “Shindig“ in Seattle. His sixth original work for the Northwest Dance Project, Carmen, won Dance Magazine’s 2017 Readers’ Choice Award for Best Collaboration. He was a featured choreographer for Russia’s TV show The Bolshoi Ballet.
To date, he has created works for the following companies: Hubbard Street Dance Chicago 2 and Northwest Dance Project, Istanbul State Ballet MDT, Tanz Luzerner Theater, Kazan State Opera Ballet, Whim W’Him, Ballet Regensburg, Ballett Koblenz, Würzburg Ballett, SALT Contemporary Dance, National Youth Dance Company, Aksanat Istanbul, Cinevox, Palucca Schule Dresden.