Tamara Bacci
Outstanding Female Dancer 2017
Tamara Bacci was born in Geneva in 1970 and studied dance at the École de Danse in Geneva before dancing at the Ballet Junior de Genève under Beatriz Consuelo. After her début with the Deutsche Oper ballet in Berlin she returned to Lausanne, where she danced first for the Béjart Ballet and then Compagnie Linga. She then took a four-year break from the stage to train as a medical practice assistant and study ayurveda. Since 2003, Tamara Bacci has been working as a freelance dancer with leading choreographers including Foofwa d’Imobilité, Gilles Jobin, Cindy van Acker and Ken Ossola. She also teaches at the Ballet Junior de Genève as well as the Manufacture and the conservatory in Lausanne.
Tamara Bacci’s career has had more than its share of twists and turns, and her work is as rich and varied as she is herself. Sometimes she dances; sometimes she assists with the choreography and then reverts to choreographing herself. She often works with the same choreographers. Since 2005’s “Pneuma” she has collaborated on a regular basis with the Belgian choreographer Cindy van Acker, who lives in Geneva: in 2009 she appeared at the Swiss Dance Festival and the Rencontres de danse contemporaine in Paris with van Acker’s “Obvie”. In 2011 she acted as choreographic assistant to Cindy van Acker on “Diffraction”, which received a Swiss Dance Award in 2013, as she had back in 2009 on Romeo Castellucci’s play “Inferno”. As a dancer, Tamara Bacci does more than act out choreographies: she invites us to reflect on the nature of dance itself. She is not afraid to engage with the concept of dance per se, be it with her role as a dancer or with dance history itself: 2013’s “Laissez-moi danser”, for example, devised with Perrine Valli and Marthe Krummenacher, deals with the role of dancers and their bodily memory. In “Duo (Lorsqu’un oiseau se pose sur une toile blanche)” (2015) at the Théâtre de Poche in Geneva she played Pina Bausch looking back at her own career from beyond the grave.
