Valentin Alfery is a self-taught dancer and choreographer coming from the street and club style community. While being rooted in the European jam and battle scene, he started to work as a freelance dancer in theatre projects in 2004.
Together with Dušana Baltić, Valentin is the co-founder and -director of the Austrian dance company Hungry Sharks. Following his first major stage work Falling from 2009, he realised eight feature-length productions, the underwater dance performance Zeitgeist and several short pieces with the Hungry Sharks, as well as creations in commissioned, academic or project-based contexts. The work of Hungry Sharks is funded by three Austrian regions – Vienna, Salzburg and Carinthia as well as by the cultural ministery of Austria. Since 2016 the pieces are regularly co-produced by brut Wien and Szene Salzburg.
In 2019 Young Sharks was initiated as a project series for emerging dancers from the urban dance field to gain experience in theatrical contexts. Valentin Alfery worked as a guest teacher and choreographer at the HF Bühnentanz in Zurich 2021, as well as at SEAD (Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance) and MUK (Dance Education of the Vienna Music and Art University) in 2022.
From 2018 – 2022 he has been curating street art, dance, performance and music within the year-round program of kulturschiene Salzburg (30 outdoor events per season) as an artistic co- director.
In addition to his work as a freelance choreographer and performer (e.g. with Simon Mayer), he is working as a puppeteer since 2013 within opera projects of the Blind Summit Puppet Company. In 2020 he became part of the puppet cast of the house repertory opera Madama Butterfly by Anthony Minghella at the Vienna State Opera which is being shown ongoingly.
In 2024 Valentin Alfery co-directed and choreographed the multi-divisional opera production Die Hamletmaschine by Heiner Müller, composition by Wolfgang Rihm at the state theatre of Kassel, Germany .
His creations can be located on a broad artistic spectrum and differ significantly from each other. They often refer to social topics and contain mostly a virtuose movement language, the work with abstract elements and a structural logic that he develops by sorting material or finding patterns and connections between topics. Identifying features of his practice are strong physical bodies, repetitive movement patterns, cross-style principles, as well as the use of an intricate musicality, an appetite for finding new movement qualities (e.g. Handsign-Style) and composing images with bodies.
