Tanja Rühl

Tanja Rühl was trained as a specialist in theatrical engineering at the Frankfurt Opera and joined Ballet Frankfurt under the artistic direction of William Forsythe in 2002 as Assistant to the Lighting Supervisor. In 2005 she was appointed Lighting Supervisor with the newly founded Forsythe Company. After completing her master of theatrical engineering majoring in lighting in 2007, she took over the position of the company’s lighting master. In the same year she began to create her first light designs for dance productions, soon also for William Forsythe.
Today, as a member of the Forsythe Productions team, she is a consultant for questions of technique and design, collaborating with ballet and dance companies. As a designer she is still working with William Forsythe on his new projects and on recreations of his existing repertoire, but also with further choreographers, artists and companies worldwide.
Productions for which she created the lighting have been performed at Paris Opéra Garnier, The Brooklyn Academy of Music New York, Tate Modern London, at the Jahrhunderthalle Bochum as part of the festival Ruhrtriennale, the Kawasaki Arts Center in Japan and the Taichung National Theatre in Taiwan.
Apart from her work on stage, Tanja Rühl is teaching lighting design and the technical aspects of lighting at the Palucca Hochschule in Dresden and the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt.