Ingo Diehl, born in 1966, stage dancer and dance teacher, has been head of the Master for Contemporary Dance Education course at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts since 2012, and Vice President since 2019.

He had previously worked in a responsible position at Tanzplan Germany and in 2011 he co-founded the cultural promotion company Diehl und Ritter.

Diehl has been President of the Hessian Theater Academy (HTA) since 2018.

The HTA was founded in 2002 to network education and practice in the performing arts in an interdisciplinary manner.

Information at

hessische-theaterakademie.de

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Eva Maria Magel

Senior cultural editor of the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Mr. Diehl, the Hessian Theater Academy, HTA for short, is 20 years old.

Is that a successful model?

Of course.

I'm not just saying that out of my position, but out of conviction.

Today we can achieve much more through cooperation.

The disciplines of the performing arts are becoming more permeable.

If we get stuck in the individual disciplines, we cannot shape any development.

It is a success: where we join forces to develop projects.

Interdisciplinarity and cooperation have been much discussed in recent years.

How does that look in the HTA?

The culture campus, this great idea that has not yet been realised, is already a reality at HTA.

For example when I look at the Frankfurt LAB, where everyone works together.

The Staatstheater and Schauspiel Frankfurt, for example, state in their directorship contracts that they are HTA partners.

And those who lead a course accept the obligation to serve on the board of HTA.

One HTA member is also represented in the appointments committees of the other universities.

This is a status quo that has now been taken for granted, and that is something special.

What does such cooperation look like?

The HTA has a community-building function.

In most cases, bilateral consideration is given to how to cooperate on individual projects.

In acting studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts, it is part of the curriculum to complete a studio year.

Now there is a cooperation with three houses - Frankfurt, Marburg and Mainz.

The music theater/singing course at the university works with the Stadttheater Gießen.

The partnerships are very different.

We sometimes have joint lectures.

Bojana Kunst, professor of dance studies, comes every Monday with her students from the Institute for Applied Theater Studies in Gießen to the Frankfurt master's course in Contemporary Dance Education, dance theory is taught at the Goethe University.

We have many points of contact there that are easily feasible.

You are a professor for contemporary dance and dance pedagogy.

As President of the HTA, you are not only concerned with dance?

no

I also see it as appreciation that someone from the dance department was elected to the top.

This speaks for the development of this division and for the HTA, which is not primarily structured around directing and opera in the classic sense, like other theater academies.

There are questions that we can bring in from the dance.

We are also not a theater academy that awards degrees.

That is what is special about the construction.

The state gives money so that we now cooperate with 27 partners.

It's about cooperation, interdisciplinarity and about discussing topics beyond the ideological discourses in the individual sections, which hopefully will help shape the theater of the future through the next generation.

As we see it, this cannot take place in an ivory tower.