Anouk van Dijk is a Dutch choreographer, director and creator behind the movement system Countertechnique. She has been the artistic director of Australia's leading contemporary dance company Chunky Move from 2012-2018. Her work is staged for a wide range of settings, varying from black box theatre, to large proscenium stages, to site-speceific works. In 2012 she was awarded the Golden Swan, the Netherlands most prestigious dance accolade - in recognition of her outstanding artistic and academic contribution to dance in her home country. Her movement methodology Countertechnique has become known worldwide. Since the start of her career, alongside her work as dancer, Anouk van Dijk has been interested in creating. Before relocating to Australia, Anouk van Dijk had an extensive carrer in Europe, touring worldwide her Dutch company anoukvandijk dc from Festival d'Avignon to Dance Tiennale Tokyo to Festival TransAmérques.

 

Anouk van Dijk's long collaborative partnership with German writer and director Falk Richter has resulted in the creation of six critically acclaimed productions such as TRUST (2009) and Complexity of Belonging (2014). Her interest in site-specific work has taken her dnacers from the Ship Yards in Amsterdam to the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.

 

In 2012, Anouk van Dijk premiered An Act of Now, her debut work for Chunky Move. The production went to win The Age Critic's Award for best new Australien work during the Melbourne Festival. For Chunky Move she has since created 12 full-evening and shorter works, including three collaborativ works: Complexity of Belonging (2014), Anti-Gravity (2017) with Singaporean visual artist Ho Tzu Nyen and the film installation work Traces (2019) with American/Australien artist Ian Strange. In 2018 Anouk van Dijk created and curated Accumulation (2018), an immersive work for the gallery space, as part of NGV Triennal EXTRA, followed by her final work for Chunky Move, Common Ground (2018).

 

Central to the foundation of Anouk van Dijk's artistic work and the training of her dancers has been Countertechnique, the movement system she developed to provide dancers with applied tools for versatile dance practice in the 21st century. Countertechnique helps dancers in training, rehearsal and performance - focusing on the process of incorporating information into action. The principles of Countertechnique can also be applied to other dance forms and training methods, such as ballet, hiphop, partnering, Yoga, running and Pilates. In 2008, Anouk van Dijk initiated the first, biennial Countertechnique Teachers Training (CTTT) program. Currently, Countertechnique has 31 certified teachers around the world and the method holds a prominent place in the publication Dance Techniques 2010, co-written by Gerald Siegmaund and Anouk van Dijk.

 

After seven fruitful years as artistic director of Chunky Move, Anouk van Dijk has decided to leave the company to concentrate on her international career. In Ferbruay 2019 her first commission Distant Matter premiered at Komische Oper for Staatsballett Berlin.