Choreography »Minutemade«

Marguerite Donlon

Marguerite Donlon initially trained privately with the dancer Anica Dawson, who was born in South Africa. In 1983, she changed over to the Dorothy Stevens Ballet & Theatre School in Halifax (West Yorkshire), completing her secondary school education at the same time in Bradford with A levels. In 1986 she moved to London, where she took part in the morning training sessions and rehearsals of the London Festival Ballet.

In 1988 she signed a contract as a dancer with the London Festival Ballet. She quickly took over solo roles, including Effie in August Bournonville's »La Sylphide« and Desdemona in José Limón's »The Moor’s Pavane« and met a number of people who left a lasting impression, including Natalia Makarova and Rudolf Nureyev. When Peter Schaufuss became Artistic Director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin Ballet, she followed him to this company as a soloist, dancing here in choreographies by Maurice Béjart, William Forsythe, John Neumeier, Bill T. Jones, Meg Stuart and Jiří Kylián. Guest appearances took her around the globe to such venues as the Metropolitan Opera House in New York and the Kirov Theatre in Leningrad (today the Mariinski Theatre, St. Petersburg).

She began to create her own choreographies at the beginning of the 1990s for such companies as the Deutsche Oper Berlin Ballet and Komische Oper Berlin. In 2000, Marguerite Donlon left the Deutsche Oper Berlin Ballet to work as a freelance choreographer. A year later, she was appointed Ballet Director and Choreographer of the Saarland State Theatre in Saarbrücken. Her activities at this theatre ended with the end of the 2012/2013 season. In 2014, she presented a piece at the Saarland State Theatre again, this time as guest choreographer.

In addition to her work in Saarbrücken, Marguerite Donlon has created choreographies for other ballet companies or rehearsed existing pieces, working with the ballet of the Vienna State Opera (2000), the Nederlands Dans Theater 2 (2002), the Stuttgart Ballet (2002), the Hubbard Street Dance Company Chicago (2001 and 2005) and the Companhia Nacional de Bailado in Lisbon (2009). Her works for the Saarbrücken Ballet Ensemble and for other companies have also been presented in the USA, Canada and Korea, in addition to Europe.

Marguerite Donlon is a lecturer in the Dance Department of the University of Music and the Performing Arts in Frankfurt am Main, and she has also appeared as a judge in a number of famous competitions, including the International Choreography Competition »no ballet« in Ludwigshafen (2007) and the International Choreography Competition in Hanover (2006, 2009 and 2013).