Sigrid T’Hooft

Theatre director, choreographer and teacher — an expert in the field of historical musical theatre.

T’Hooft studied classical dance and graduated in musicology from the Universityof Leuven. While still a student, she became interested in the techniques of ancient dances and Сommedia dell’arte. In 1996, together with the Ian Steyn Dutoit Ballet Studio, she organised a training course in Ghenton the baroque dance ‘Corpo Barocco’, on the back of which, a dance company of the same name was founded in 2005. For ‘Corpo Barocco’, T’Hooft has staged Corpus Bach to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (2005, early music festival in Brugge) and Handel’s operas Radamisto (2009, Händel Festspiele in Karlsruhe) and Amadigi di Gaula (2012, Händel Festspiele in Göttingen). The production of Radamisto was subsequently nominated in the rediscovery category for Best Director and Best Costume by the magazine Opernwelt in 2009. In 2012, the director staged Haydn’s The Paladin Orlando and a year later La clemenza di Tito by Mozart in Drottningholm in Sweden. She has also staged performances to the music of baroque composers such as John Blow, Reinhard Keiser, Antonio Caldara, Giulio Caccini, Flavio Carlo Lanciani, Claudio Monteverdi, Henry Purcell and Johann Heinrich Schmelzer.

Borodin’s Prince Igor is T’Hooft’s first experience with Russian opera.

T’Hooft successfully combines her career as a director and choreographer with her vocation as a teacher. She teaches a Baroque Gesture and Historical Performance Practice on Stage course at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague and at the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig. She also lectures at the International Handel Academy Karlsruhe, the Vadstena Academy in Sweden and at York University in Toronto.
Among T’Hooft’s future projects are Handel’s opera Imeneo and oratorio Susanna, Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Johann Adolf Hasse’s serenade for two voices Antony and Cleopatra.