Hicks and Reynolds – dance company

H&R
Hicks and Reynolds.
Human Resources?
Holding Rocks! On unstable ground…

Profile

Hicks and Reynolds are a dance company working in NRW, Lower Saxony, and Hessen Germany. They create finely crafted, research-driven works. Their collaborative process involves turning ideas over from multiple angles, arriving at insights that are often surprising, humorous, and deeply reflective.

As strong improvisers and transdisciplinary performers, they explore their themes through an expanded lens of contemporary dance, weaving together improvisation, set choreography, text, character and song. Their sustained interests in care, hospitality, failure, and idiosyncratic gesture shape both their creative methods and the relationships they cultivate with audiences.

Their pieces unfold through quirky, humorous, and intimate movement languages—funny but never slapstick—allowing their aesthetic to take a political stance that questions accepted dance hierarchies and traditional notions of beauty, grace, or coherence.

Each work investigates how the ridiculous, the nonsensical, and the failure to “make sense” can become forms of resistance to normative ways of knowing.

At the heart of their practice lies a commitment to authentic connection, vulnerability, and empathy. By inviting audiences into spaces of shared presence and mutual curiosity, Hicks and Reynolds create performances that feel both intimate and open-ended—welcoming, affecting, and inclusive. Meeting each other in honest, sometimes faltering ways, they reveal the cracks in the façade, treating imperfection itself as a gesture of care: a way to think, feel, and imagine differently together.

Since 2018 Hicks and Reynolds have established a clear artistic profile recognized both locally and internationally. Their work is shaped by a distinctive blend of humour, political inquiry, accessibility, and a deep attentiveness to the audience–performer relationship—an artistic individuality that has become increasingly visible with each new production.

Press

“Performances mit Humor, Leichtigkeit und Freude" zu machen. Und das ist schon eine ungewöhnliche freie Haltung der beiden Nordamerikanerinnen (…) Damit kommt man oft auch an tiefe Gefühle heran.”
- Andreas Hartmann, Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung, September 2018

“Laura Hicks und Ilana Reynolds erforschen absurde Gesten und Bewegungen. Gerade ihre Versuche, dabei mit dem Publikum zu kommunizieren, entwickeln eine Komik, wie man sie im zeitgenössischen Tanz nicht so oft zu sehen bekommt. Selten war kommunikatives Scheitern so vergnüglich und intelligent zugleich.”
- Auswahlkommission Freie Szene HTT21

“the concept of a relaxed performance is brilliantly integrated throughout the structure of the show. even the dramaturgy feels like it’s carrying me along.”
- Lea Gockel, Inclusive Practice Manager, Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm, consultant and advisor for “We Are All Here - The Show”

“Ilana Reynolds und Laura Hicks brachten mit ihrer Performance „We Are All Here – The Show“ die Gäste in Halle 19 zum Staunen. Die Vorstellung vereinte Tanz mit gesellschaftskritischen Elementen und begeisterte die Zuschauer. Doch die Show hielt mehr als nur tänzerische Perfektion bereit.”
- Georg Wießner 1.04.2026, Cellesche Zeitung

“Ich war wirklich super begeistert, was die beiden da sehr präzise, total durchdacht, sehr humorvoll auf die Bühne brachten (…) Und das Spiel zwischen realen Körpern und digitaler Welt spielt da eben auch so mit. Und wirklich sehr gekonnt auf die Schippe genommen.”
- Melanie Suchy, Schwerpunkt Theater: Saisonbilanz 2024/25 (Folge 10), 20. Aug 2025, https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/saisonbilanz-2024-25-folge-10.

Works currently touring

2025 We Are All Here - The Show
(co-production with Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm), 90 Minutes, Black Box

2024 The Hospitality Lab for Forgotten Practices
30 minutes, Site-Specific Public Intervention

2018 Making Impressions and Other Failures
(Wiederaufnahme 2024), 40 Minutes, Black Box

Biography

Hicks and Reynolds is the collaborative choreographic entity of Laura Hicks and Ilana Reynolds. Creating work together since 2018, the duo met in Berlin in 2012, and later both completed their masters as part of MACoDE at HfMDK Frankfurt. With the shared experience of being North American expats who moved to Germany, they were drawn together through their love of spontaneity and humour. Inspired by playful and uninhibited improvisation, they developed a working method that uses high energy and spontaneous idiosyncratic movement. Their first work, “Making Impressions and Other Failures” (2018/Frankfurt), was selected by jury for the Hessisches Theatertage21 and #SPOTTED 2024, toured both nationally and internationally. Interested in how ridiculous impulses can be an active form of resistance to normative ways of knowing, they continue to pursue their research into performing aesthetics of access in the form of their Hospitality Lab for Forgotten Practices, performed for The Political Body Kassel (2024), Spaziertanz Kassel (2024), Impulstanz LACE Two Symposium, Austria (2024) and We Are All Here - The Show (2025), a co-production with Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt and selected by jury for the the Guest Performance Network #SPOTTED 2026.