Hermes Karin

Karin Hermes trained as a stage dancer at the Zurich Ballet Academy and the School of American Ballet in New York City. She went on to study dance pedagogy at the Institute for Stage Dance at the Cologne University of Music and, as a scholarship holder, studied movement analysis and notation at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris. She worked as a dancer and choreographic assistant at the Schauspielhaus Zürich, the Stuttgart State Theatre, and in the independent scene, as well as a ballet mistress in Paris. From 2004 to 2007, she was the artistic director of the atempo repertory dance ensemble in Bern. From 2011, she served for four years as head of the Research Panel of the International Council of Kinetography Laban. Hermes has lectured at universities in Berlin, Essen-Werden, Cologne, Paris, Lyon, and London.

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In 2016, she received the Swiss Dance Award for Cultural Dance Heritage for the Sigurd Leeder project, and a year later, the cultural mediation award from the Canton of Bern. In 2020, her project Die rote Kapelle won the Swiss Dance Award for Cultural Dance Heritage. Since 2007, Hermes has directed the Bern-based dance production and mediation studio hermesdance. She is a lecturer in dance mediation, technique, and theory in the Music and Movement degree program at the Bern Academy of the Arts and, as of 2021, has been responsible for dance mediation for Bern Ballett at Bühnen Bern.