The most sensitive personnel in the Linz State Theater at the moment has been decided: the previous company manager will succeed the harshly criticized dance director Mei Hong Lin. There had recently been massive allegations against the 62-year-old from the dance ensemble (failure to provide assistance, management style).
An independent commission had exonerated the Taiwanese, who has headed the dance department at the state theater since 2013, last week because the relationship between the ensemble and its boss was irreversibly disrupted, but the employment relationship has now been dissolved by mutual agreement.
The previous ensemble manager and dramaturge Roma Janus will take over the artistic direction of the dance company at the Landestheater. Born in Poland, she will be responsible for the programmatic orientation and the daily support of the dancers. Janus had led the dance company on an interim basis since the allegations against Mei Hong Lin became known, together with artistic director Hermann Schneider. She is looking forward to her task: “With the production ‘The Garden’ the ensemble has demonstrated the diversity of the dance vocabulary. With the dance piece ‘Buddha’ (choreography Ashley Lobo, note) the dance company with eight new dancers has been since this Season has grown into a collective. I am very happy to continue on this path together with the company, with artistic diversity as a collective.”
Janus studied theatre, film and media studies in Vienna. In 2015 she founded the agency Roconcept Performing Arts Management. Her network in the dance industry is correspondingly large thanks to cooperation with, for example, the Tanzquartier Wien. In 2016 Janus curated the Austrian dance festival “Let the Artist (Not) Die” for the then European Capital of Culture Wroclaw.
The crisis-ridden division is also being reorganized. There will no longer be a chief choreographer, but guest choreographers who will work intensively with Janus.
Source: Nachrichten
