Sebastian Weber Dance Company

Thought-provoking tap dance that is catchy and surprising. The Sebastian Weber Dance Company shows dance that wants to express something and tells a story. Wide awake, sweaty and nimble. Angry, tender, cheesy, silly, but never indifferent.

Our dance is a way to face the world. We develop dance pieces on topics that move us in everyday life and allow us to find our position on social issues. To dance is to navigate in wild waters; it’s an ongoing search and progression.

We love the feeling of dancing: the intoxication of the groove and the alertness of the body. Tap dance is archaic in the way it links movement and rhythm. Tap dance is always music. And always communication. The key lies in hearing more than in doing.

Dance is also a place of contradictions: We’re both individuals and a collective, childish and serious, clueless and competent. We love the fact that dance does not provide simple truths, but remains complex and eclectic even in simple moments.

Tap dance is part of the jazz tradition. Much of our artistic identity comes from the Afro-American heritage of jazz and tap. That is also a commitment. We plan to dance until we’re as old as the hills. We do not see our dance as a product to sell, but as a process we want to share with as many people as possible. We look forward to welcoming you into our community!

Our Story

In 2017, we created our first production CABOOM out of nothing. Sebastian came up with new methods and Janne, Andrea, Helen, Nik and Michela joined in and supported his ideas. The road we took was bumpy and confusing, but we powered ahead and reached our destination.

Together with our partners LOFFT – Das Theater and Theater Koblenz, we then received three years of funding from the German Federal Cultural Foundation’s Doppelpass Theatre Cooperation Fund. It was a quantum leap! We were able to recruit new company members and produced the pieces COWBOYS and FOLK FICTION. Since then, we’ve collaborated with and been spurred on by great dramatic advisors such as Guy Cools, Lidy Mouw and Steffen Fuchs. All of them have helped us to understand our dance more clearly.

Since 2019, more theaters have begun to support us. A residence at the Hessian State Ballet Company inspired the production TOUCH, in which we dance barefoot on sand. Our productions are always based on current affairs, but we also learn through dance: We explore the ground, partnering, team up with dancers from other areas and find inspiration when we learn and train together.

To our complete surprise, we received the Saxon Dance Prize for COWBOYS and, shortly afterwards, our first project development funding from the city of Leipzig. We’re intensifying our activities in the region, developing introductory and participatory programs for a new audience and improving the organizational structure of the Company.

With the help of a #reload grant from the German Federal Cultural Foundation, we’re currently developing initial ideas for a new, pandemic-safe production, which will premiere in 2021.

Dancers

Andrea Alvergue

Andrea has the ability to immerse herself in every dance in such a way that it becomes her personal story, full of echoes and reverberations. Every time she dances, new ideas are revealed.

She studied ballet, contemporary dance and tap dance in Honduras, Canada and Spain. Her current projects include the duo Blue Taps with Nik Kemeny and she tours with the Swing Machine Orchestra in Spain.

On top of all this, Andrea also completed a law degree in Madrid! She has been living in Leipzig since 2019 and is now learning German.

Dances in Caboom, Cowboys, Folk Fiction
Home El Salvador / Leipzig

Helen Duffy

No one can make precision look as nimble and hard work as cheerful as Helen does. Her mix of humor and passion is infectious and always motivates us to go one step further.

Helen studied at Bird College, London as well as in New York and Barcelona. She is a member of the successful English company Old Kent Road and produces Duffy’s Jam in London.

Her Britney Spears tribute with Vilma is legendary.

Dances in Caboom, Cowboys, Touch, Folk Fiction
Home London

Janne Eraker

Janne has a creative mind; she’s smart, playful and unpredictable. She effortlessly switches from pragmatism to poetry, from trivial to profound. It’s her honest feedback that constantly makes us better.

As visionary creative, Janne explores tap dance from a contemporary perspective. Her numerous projects range from the solo performance Rhythm is a Dancer through to the noise art duo Lamborghini and her installation art performance Tap Noir, in which her dancing triggers stroboscopes and sound effects.

Dances in Caboom, Cowboys, Folk Fiction
Home Oslo

Vilma Kananen

Vilma is the queen of extremes: She can switch from weightlessness to big bang at the drop of a hat and finds poetry where others aren’t looking. Her power is amazing.

She trained as a tap dancer at the Escola Luthier in Barcelona, studied music and sings in successful Swedish bands. In her youth, she was a competitive figure skater.

Pieces Cowboys, Folk Fiction
Home Stockholm / Berlin

Nikolai Kemeny

Nik is our athlete. He is as fit as can be, but will dance to the point of exhaustion. It’s this dedication, coupled with his technical brilliance and his passion for jazz, that shapes his style.

His projects include working with Andrea Alvergue in Blue Tap and the Swing Machine Orchestra, various big band concerts and the multi-media performance Resonance with Daniel Luka and the Xenorama collective.

Nik always has good music on hand and is our DJ on the road. He can sleep anywhere and is incredibly funny.

Dances in Caboom, Cowboys, Touch, Folk Fiction
Home Leipzig

Michela Pesce

No one knows the Company’s repertoire and sociology like Michela. She is Sebastian’s sparring partner when it comes to developing new pieces. During rehearsals, she knows what everyone has to do, dances Sebastian’s part while he watches and takes notes when he dances. She knows all (!) the parts and is our main source of feedback. She also runs the tech during the performances and keeps the show going.

Traveling around the world under the stage name Samaki, Michela leads a double life doing cabaret. Her one-woman show, Confused Girl, features a mix of juggling, dance and comedy.

Pieces Caboom, Cowboys, Touch, Folk Fiction
Home Rom / Barcelona

Sam Vère

With his sense of calm and mindfulness, Sam is tower of strength, but under his gentle surface is the agility of a panther. Anyone who has seen Sam get down in the first scene of COWBOYS wants to hire him as a bodyguard.

Sam has been tap dancing since he was 5 years old. Having completed his training at Escola Luthier in Barcelona, he now performs in Spain and France in various jazz projects and is part of the tap group 3c.

Just for the record: Sam makes a mean quiche and amazing crepes.

Pieces Cowboys, Folk Fiction
Home Montpellier / Barcelona

Josepha Vogel

Josepha has been with the Company as production manager from day one. She keeps calm in a sea of chaos, always knows where we need to go and solves a whole host of problems, both big and small. We truly believe she has the ability to be in two places at once.

She studied theater arts in Leipzig and has been working as a freelance production manager for numerous Leipzig dance and theater productions since 2012.

Josepha herself has been dancing since she was 5 years old and really cuts a rug with her tap dance.

Pieces Cowboys, Touch, Folk Fiction
Home Leipzig

Sebastian Weber

Long and lanky, Sebastian is a kind of anti-dancer type; however, he is capable of soaring musical phrasing and manages to mesmerize the audience with his trance-like intensity.

Sebastian has been choreographing eclectic, often multi-media pieces for around 25 years. His pieces explore tap dance as a current form of expression and he has received multiple awards for his work. At the beginning of his career he met the masters of jazz tap Chuck Green, Buster Brown and Lon Chaney, who continue to inspire him to this day.

Originally, Sebastian dreamed of a career as a ballet dancer; luckily for the world of tap dance, this did not come to fruition.

Dances in Caboom, Coboys, Touch, Folk Fiction
Home Leipzig

Sebastian Weber

Sebastian Weber began his career in the early 90s under the wings of legendary tap dance masters Chuck Green and Buster Brown in New York. Inspired and supported by these charismatic role models, Weber developed a distinctive, lanky, highly individual dance style, which is characterized by passionate improvisation, technical strength and musical expressiveness.

Weber has danced throughout Europe, the USA, West Africa and China, as well as for various TV shows, commercials, a feature film and even gave a complete radio concert on ORF, an honor that has hardly been given to a tap dancer since the invention of television.

As a choreographer, he has been producing cross-genre, often multimedia pieces since 1998, which are repeatedly honored by city, state and federal funding. Twice he received the Leipzig Movement Art Award, once the Saxonian Dance Award. He also teaches internationally at workshops and festivals.