Anouk van Dijk

Educator / Choreographer / Artistic Director

Anouk van Dijk is a choreographer, dancer, artistic director and the creator of the movement system, Countertechnique. She ran her own Amsterdam-based dance company from 1998-2012, and was Artistic Director of dance company Chunky Move in Melbourne, Australia, for seven years from 2012-2018. She's currently a freelance choreographer and the Founding Artistic Director of Countertechnique.

Having graduated from the Rotterdam Dance Academy in 1985, Van Dijk spent the first ten years of her career as a lead soloist for Rotterdam Dance Company and Amanda Miller’s Pretty Ugly Dance Company. From early on, she was attracted to the creation of performance and from 1996 committed herself exclusively to the conception, construction and performance of her own work. In 1998, Van Dijk formed anoukvandijk dc, her own company dedicated to creating work that sought to provide an insight into the many facets of the human experience through the lens of contemporary dance. In 2012, she was appointed artistic director of dance company Chunky Move in Melbourne, Australia.

Anouk van Dijk stages her works in a wide range of settings, varying from black box theatre to large proscenium stages and site-specific works, and has in her career created so far thirty-five full-length works that toured the globe, at the worlds leading festivals and venues including Festival d’Avignon, Adelaide Festival, Sydney Opera House, Dance Triennale Tokyo, American Dance Festival and Festival TransAmériques.

Anouk van Dijk has collaborated across disciplines internationally, with renowned artists such as Falk Richter (Germany), Ho Tzu Nyen (Singapore), Theun Mosk (Netherlands), Marg Horwell (Australia) and Ian Strange (US/Australia). In recent years, Van Dijk created Distant Matter for Staatsballett Berlin, TOUCH in collaboration with Falk Richter for Munich Kammerspiele, and Out of the Blue for Skanes Dansteater and Malmö Opera (Sweden).

Central to the foundation of Anouk van Dijk’s work and the training of her dancers has been Countertechnique, the movement system Van Dijk developed. Upon her departure from the Netherlands, Anouk van Dijk was awarded the Golden Swan (Gouden Zwaan) – the Netherlands’ most prestigious dance accolade – in recognition of her outstanding artistic and academic contribution to dance in her home country.