Choreographer and dancer

Thomas Freundlich (b. 1975) has graduated from the professional training program of the Finnish National Ballet School in 2001. He has danced in contemporary dance works by, among others, Jorma Uotinen, Nils Christe, Katri Soini and Tuomo Railo, appearing in Finland, Germany, Lithuania, Jordan, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, France, The Netherlands, Latvia, Russia and the United States. He has studied jazz dance with Russell Adamson in addition to furthering his dance training in New York and at the Boston Conservatory.

In mime, movement theatre and dramatic dance, Mr. Freundlich’s teachers were renowned mime artists Adam Darius and Kazimir Kolesnik, with whom he has collaborated on numerous projects in Finland and internationally.

Mr. Freundlich's latest dance work, the solo Futureproof, was premiered at the 13th International Solo-Dance-Theatre Festival in Stuttgart in March 2009. His recent dance productions also include Actuator, a groundbreaking duet for dancer and industrial robot which was premiered at the Zodiak Center for New Dance in Helsinki in May 2008.

Mr. Freundlich’s contemporary dance works Airflow and Sleepless were realized in collaboration with Pasi Hirvonen, one of Finland's leading artists on the classical and contemporary accordion. In 2005 and 2006, Thomas Freundlich collaborated with Helsinki Skaala Opera on the highly praised Finnish premieres of Philip Glass's operas Les Enfants Terribles, based on the novel by Jean Cocteau, and In the Penal Colony, after Franz Kafka. In 2006, Mr. Freundlich was also acclaimed for his acting and dancing in the title role of Skaala's production of The Manson Family Opera by John Moran.  

In 2005, Mr. Freundlich's work Dreamcatcher, performed by Tanja Kuisma, won two awards, including the Audience Prize, at the at the 9th International Solo-Dance-Theatre Festival in Stuttgart. The solo has subsequently been seen at numerous dance festivals in Germany, The Netherlands, Finland and Spain. 

In 2005, Mr. Freundlich also appeared as guest dancer with the Jordanian PAC Dance Theatre Troupe in Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. In the same year, Mr. Freundlich and dancers guested in Damascus, Syria, to take part in Fusion, the Finnish-Jordanian choreographic exchange project initiated by Adam Darius. The other choreographers of the evening, which combined Finnish and Jordanian contemporary dance and dance theatre, were Rania Kamhawi and Kazimir Kolesnik. The production was first presented in Amman, Jordan, in September 2003 under the patronage of HM Queen Noor Al Hussein.

Thomas Freundlich’s earlier work includes the highly successful evening-length dance theatre piece James Dean (written and directed by Adam Darius), in which he danced the title role; and Napalm, a solo for Finnish National Ballet principal Barbora Kohoutková that was among four of Mr. Freundlich’s works presented on the small stage of the Finnish National Opera in May 2001.  

Mr. Freundlich's work has been acknowledged with over 20 grants and awards from cultural foundations, arts councils and festivals in Finland and abroad. He has served as a board member of the Finnish Union of Dance Artists and the Finnish Dance Information Centre, and is a co-founder (with Valtteri Raekallio) of Liikekieli.com, Finland's online dance magazine. In November 2008, Raekallio and Freundlich accepted the Finnish State Award for Dance Arts, one of Finland's highest accolades in dance, on behalf of Liikekieli.com.