'YIBU DANCE' is a production entity founded in 2019 by the Kurt Jooss prize winning choreographer couple Chun Zhang bio and Kai Strathmann bio. 'Yibu, Yibu', means step by step in Chinese. Being experienced in wide variety of styles and subjects - including Popping, LA style, ballet, Jooss-Leeder technique, Laban / Bartenieff movement studies, Chinese classical dance and folklore, Asian martial arts and Pilates as well as inspired by I Ching, biology, anthropology, mechanics, geometry, physics and mathematics, 'movement' has become their home of joy, genius and aesthetic. Meanwhile, movement is their evolution. They think-move-being reflectively, to coexist with the environment and form new connections. This unique human ability, and their solid knowledge of fundamental elements in movement,  brings their concepts and art craft, vision and embodiment together: a perceiving and transforming choreographic practice, that does not reflect the crowd, but represent the sensation and possibilities of living in a human body.

Since 2015, the first day of their master study in choreography in the Folkwang University of Arts, Chun and Kai started to work and create together as a team. Their graduate productions with the Folkwang Tanzstudio are both nominated by the renowned Kurt Jooss Preis in 2019, Chun won the final prize with her piece 'Being Far Away From'. In the same year, they founded YIBU DANCE, bases in NRW, Germany. Their individual and together productions, research projects, performance, presentation and teaching activities are presented here. 

 © Niklas Hlawatsch