Katja Wünsche is a native of Dresden, Germany, but grew up in Berlin. It was there that she attended the State Ballet School, from which she graduated in 1999. A semi-finalist in the 1997 Prix de Lausanne international ballet competition, she came second in the same contest two years later, when she also earned the event’s Audience Favourite Award. The same year – 1999 – she won first prize in the Eurovision Young Dancers competition. After completing her studies, she joined the Stuttgart Ballet’s corps de ballet for the 1999/2000 season, where she was promoted to principal dancer in 2006/07. In 2007, she won Germany’s Zukunft dance award and its DER FAUST theatre prize (in the Dance Performance category) for her interpretation of Nadia in Mauro Bigonzetti’s I Fratelli. For the Stuttgart Ballet, she danced leading roles in choreographies by John Cranko (Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, Onegin), John Neumeier (A Streetcar Named Desire, La Dame aux Camélias), Marcia Haydée (The Sleeping Beauty, La Sylphide, La Fille Mal Gardée) and Christian Spuck (Lulu, The Sandman, Leonce and Lena, Das Fräulein von S.), and further performed in works by William Forsythe, Jirí Kylián, Paul Lightfoot/Sol León and Marco Goecke. She joined the Ballett Zürich as a soloist for the 2012/13 season, since when she has danced Juliet in Christian Spuck’s Romeo and Juliet, Princess Lena in Leonce and Lena, Marie in Woyzeck and Kitty in Anna Karenina. She has also been seen in choreographies by Sol León/Paul Lightfoot, Douglas Lee, Martin Schläpfer, Wayne McGregor and Marco Goecke. And she was awarded the Friends of Ballett Zürich Dance Prize for 2014.
PerformedREMINISCENCE at the 65th anniversary of the Royal Ballet School of Antwerp 2017
