A visual artist whose practice is firmly rooted in dance, Thomas Lempertz was born in Pforzheim, Germany, and made his stage debut while still studying at the John Cranko School, appearing with the Stuttgart Ballet as a child prodigy tap dancer in the musical “On Your Toes”.
Following a successful career as a soloist at the Stuttgart Ballet, where he performed works ranging from ballet classics to more contemporary offerings, Lempertz quit dancing in 2003 to pursue fashion design, opening his own fashion studio and boutique in the centre of Stuttgart. In 2011, he was nominated for the “New Faces Award Fashion” for his creations inspired by the old fashion houses, contemporary haute couture, and dance costumes.
Since 2013, Lempertz has been working with internationally acclaimed choreographers, designing costumes for ballet and dance, drawing from his experience as a former dancer.
In 2015, Lempertz returned to the stage after 12 years with “Greyhounds”, a highly energetic solo specially created for him by Marco Goecke, as part of an Egon Madsen’s project for former dancers at Theaterhaus Stuttgart.
Lempertz’s wide-ranging interests eventually led him to further his studies in Intermedia Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart from 2015 to 2017, while creating his own work with an emphasis on performance installations. Lempertz has also been teaching art and movement workshops as a guest lecturer at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart in a laboratory for Dance, Choreography and Movement, and at the Film Academy in Ludwigsburg.
Constantly swivelling between the three pillars integral to his work and artistic expression - dance, art, and costumes - which continually cross-pollinate his creations in the respective fields, Lempertz has increasingly gravitated towards his practice as a visual artist in recent years, while retaining his approach as a dancer at heart.
Highlights include his first solo exhibition “Liquid Skin” at the Galerie Kernweine in 2019, the group exhibition “Inszenierung I Inspiration Tanz und Fotograpfie“ at the Deutsche Tanzmuseum Köln in 2021, another solo exhibition “Motion is Solution” in 2021 and the group exhibition “What I like” in 2022, both at the Galerie der Stadt Sindelfingen, as well as a solo exhibition “Fluid Gravity” at the Galerie Kernweine in 2023.
Beyond crafting dance performances as a recurring and prominent feature in several of his exhibitions, Lempertz has stepped up his choreographic ventures in recent years, co-creating three solos with ballet dancer Friedemann Vogel: “Not in my hands” which was made during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021, “Die Seele am Faden/Soul Threads” which premiered at the Kleist Forum and toured to the Spoleto Festival in Italy in 2024, and “Écorché! Anatomie des Tanzes” , jointly conceptualized with Professor Anna Pawlak, Deputy Spokesperson of the Collaborative Research Center at the University of Tübingen in the same year.