Dasniya Sommer
Berlin choreographer and dancer, trained in classical ballet, who has studied and taught Japanese rope since 2006 and brings shibari into stage works such as Bondage Duell, shown at Sophiensæle, and into her teaching at Haus Sommer and Karada House.
Dasniya Sommer is a choreographer, dancer and visual artist based in Berlin whose work spans classical ballet and Japanese rope. Unlike most rope teachers, she is documented mainly by theaters and festivals, and the account below draws on their artist pages.
Dance and choreography
According to Schauspielhaus Bochum’s biography, she grew up in Berlin, trained in classical ballet with the Berlin Staatsballett and later studied dance in New York. Since 2008, according to the same page, she has made her own choreographies and worked with choreographers and companies including Helena Waldmann, Romeo Castellucci, Angela Schubot, Florentina Holzinger, das Helmi and Monstertruck, and she also advises film and art projects. HAU Hebbel am Ufer describes her as a choreographer who looks at movement from the dancer’s point of view and calls her body her choreographic brain. In 2016 she founded Haus Sommer, a studio at the Uferhallen in Berlin where she researches physical expression with artists from many disciplines. The Bochum page lists ballet, contemporary dance, butoh, shibari, puppetry, masks and photo sessions among the materials she combines.
Rope
The City of Women festival archive states that she has studied and taught the Japanese rope technique shibari since 2006 and combines it with yoga and ballet in performance. It credits her background in philosophy, with a focus on aesthetics and gender studies, with shaping her physical work, and mentions a long collaboration with the choreographer Frances d’Ath on the structure of tying and on systems for improvising with rope. The same text says she staged shibari for Romeo Castellucci’s production of Parsifal at La Monnaie in Brussels.
Her best-documented rope piece is Bondage Duell, a duet with Silke Schönfleisch produced by Haus Sommer with Sophiensæle and the Grenzenlos Kultur festival. The Performing Arts Festival Berlin archive, which listed it at Sophiensæle in June 2018 with Sommer credited for choreography and dance, describes an unequal contest between a very tall ballerina and a very small official on a tricycle that uses classical dance and Japanese bondage to look at physical and social patterns of bonding, empowerment and constraint.
Teaching
The Bochum biography adds that she teaches, both at her studio and abroad, and works as an advisor to choreographers and directors. In autumn 2026 she also taught at Karada House in Berlin, including a monthly rope lab on movement and expression; the studio’s listing credits her with fifteen years of shibari practice, a shorter span than the 2006 start given by City of Women.