Audition

Masa Kolar, a petite woman with a large head of curls, sits on a patio in Prenz­lauer Berg in the sweltering July heat and considers herself lucky. Yesterday she was auditioning for Sasha Waltz’s contemporary dance company, last night she was coming to terms with her rejection, today she is looking forward.
“Some dancers spend their lives going from one audition to the next,” she says.  Masa, 33, was spared that fate. After growing up in the former Yugoslavia, where both her parents were modern dancers, she moved to Belgium to study dance.

Soon after, she met the choreographer Stephan Thoss. She’s spent the last eight years in Kiel and Hanover working with him and his company on the margin between classic and modern dance.

“It sounds like I’m boasting when I say that I don’t audition much,” she says, “but it’s true. I was very lucky to meet Thoss so early. As long as I was working with him, I was fulfilled. I had no reason to look further.”

But now that Thoss’ company is dissolving, Masa is having to reacquaint herself with the market. When she read that Sasha Waltz was looking to fill two positions in her company, Masa was curious. She had seen about half of Waltz’s choreographies ...