Helge Letonia was born in Leoben, Austria and studied classical dance in Graz and Amsterdam, as well as modern dance under Alvin Ailey and Erick Hawkins in New York. Engagements lead him among others to the Ballet of the Oper Graz, Jan Fabre, Montréal Danse and to the dance theatre in Bremen under Susanne Linke. There, in 1995 he started to create his own pieces. 1996 he founded steptext dance project, which he established as a production house and center for contemporary dance art in 2003 in the Schwankhalle (which he co-conceptualized). He is the Director and Artistic Director there to this day.
In addition to his 50 dance creations, which are often realized in interdisciplinary and transcultural collaboration and presented worldwide, he choreographs for opera productions, including those of the Salzburg Festival, the Zurich Opera
House, the Berlin State Opera, New National Opera Tokyo and Semperoper Dresden. Due to his impressively sensual aesthetic, Helge Letonja creates lively friction surfaces and interesting reflections of social conditions and processes.
