News
1950–2025
The Berlin-born soloist and ballet teacher Monika Radamm has passed away at the age of 75. Born in 1950, she received her training at the Berlin Dance Academy under Tatjana Gsovsky and Gert Reinholm, studying at the studio on Uhlandstraße. She began her career at the theater in Kiel and, from the 1966/67 season onward, joined the ballet company of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, quickly rising to the rank of soloist.
With her effortlessly natural command of technical virtuosity, she won the hearts of the Deutsche Oper Berlin’s ballet audiences and remains fondly remembered for performances such as the Peasant Pas de Deux in Giselle, the Blue Bird Pas de Deux and the Variation of the Canari qui chante in Kenneth MacMillan’s Sleeping Beauty, and as the Little Princess in MacMillan’s Swan Lake. She was entrusted with the solo in the fourth movement of George Balanchine’s Symphony in C (1969), was selected by choreographer Marcel Luipart for a leading role in Aribert Reimann’s Die Vogelscheuchen (premiere 1970, ballet libretto by Günter Grass), and danced the Princess in László Seregi’s The Wooden Prince (1974).
In 1981, she retired from the stage and dedicated herself to teaching ballet—not only at the Berlin Dance Academy, still under her former mentor Tatjana Gsovsky, but also, for several years in the mid-1990s, at the State School of Dance in Leipzig (later the Ballet School of the Leipzig Opera). She was also invited to Dresden as a guest ballet master by the Semperoper Ballet. Even in retirement, she continued to teach classical ballet at the Leković Ballet School in Berlin.
Monika Radamm passed away in Berlin in early August 2025 at the age of 75. The Berlin State Ballet remembers this extraordinary and spirited Berlin soloist with deep gratitude.
Artistic Directorship