ELISABETH CLARKE-HASTERS

Biography

Elisabeth Clarke-Hasters is an actor, dancer, choreographer, and teacher based in Germany whose career connects American and European performance traditions. She trained in Philadelphia and North Carolina, at the School of American Ballet in New York, in the Dance Theatre of Harlem apprenticeship program, and at Maurice Béjart’s Mudra in Brussels.

Her performance history includes work with Béjart, Pina Bausch and Tanztheater Wuppertal, and composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. She has performed internationally in concert, dance, and theater settings and later extended this practice into choreography, actor training, and screen work.

Her teaching has included acting, ballet, movement, and physical theater. At Die Etage in Berlin, she held leadership roles and developed the Universal Performer program, drawing on the integrated artistic training she experienced at Mudra.

Contributions to BGHRA

Clarke-Hasters’s relationship with BGHRA grew into a friendship that reaches well beyond its public programs. Following BGHRA’s 2021 event with her daughter Alice Hasters, Rosemarie Peña and Sonya Donaldson were drawn to Elisabeth’s social media presence, captivated by her elegance and what they were learning about her life and artistic experience in Germany. Peña reached out to arrange a Zoom conversation. Discovering their shared connections to the Philadelphia area—where Elisabeth grew up, close to Peña’s childhood home in New Jersey—they quickly recognized a deep affinity. In Peña’s words, they became “sisters from the soul.”

Their Sunday-morning Zoom conversations became a treasured weekly ritual. Clarke-Hasters also offered Peña ballet lessons over Zoom, rekindling the joy of her earlier twelve years of dance study. These sessions brought movement, exercise, laughter, and fellowship into their friendship. As Peña’s caregiving responsibilities for her mother grew and Clarke-Hasters returned to performing, their regular meetings became less frequent, but their bond endured.

During Peña’s 2024 visit to Berlin to meet her family, Elisabeth’s family welcomed her to dinner at Alice’s home. That gathering, preserved in a cherished photograph, marked a particularly precious moment of belonging and a friendship Peña regards as lifelong.

BGHRA’s audiovisual archive preserves A Conversation with Elisabeth Clarke-Hasters, held on March 3, 2022, and the Hasters family roundtable at the 2023 conference. These recordings form part of her continuing contribution to BGHRA’s conversations about art, family, identity, and Black life in Germany.

As BGHRA’s Executive Director of Arts & Culture, Clarke-Hasters brings performance practice into the association’s work of documenting and sharing Black German histories. Her contributions connect artistic experience with community conversation and the preservation of cultural memory.

She co-curated BGHRA’s 2023 conference, Art as Resistance: Transcultural Expressions, and participated as a moderator and discussant. Explore the 2023 conference and BGHRA’s artists and performers resources.

Her conference contributions extend across multiple years. She served on the 2024 JOY… and PAIN program committee and moderated keynote conversations with Mariama Diagne and Malick Bauer. She also served on the 2025 conference program committee. These continuing contributions bring artists, scholarship, and community audiences into conversation.

Projects & Areas of Practice

• Choreography and movement. Her work has included Jedermann at the Salzburg Festival, Der Meister und Margarita at Cologne Opera, and Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria in Athens and Florence.
• Embodied learning. Workshops and teaching connect movement, performance, and reflection, including work with arts students, therapists, counselors, and interdisciplinary groups.

Selected Performance Work

• Kontakthof – Echoes of ’78. Clarke-Hasters returns as one of nine original dancers in Meryl Tankard’s production, which brings their present-day performances into dialogue with archival footage of the 1978 cast.
• Pina Bausch performance archive. Her repertory includes The Seven Deadly Sins, Bluebeard, Come Dance With Me, Kontakthof, and Arien. Explore the archive and production records.
• Film and television. Selected credits include Sam – A Saxon (Denise), Operation Napoleon (Doris Jones), Sweet Disaster (Lore), and Over & Out (Sister Farret). Filmography and showreel.

Presentations, Interviews & Media

• The New York Times, November 18, 2024. Read the coverage of Kontakthof – Echoes of ’78, featuring members of Pina Bausch’s original cast, including Clarke-Hasters, returning to the work decades later. A subscription may be required.
• Interview with Elisabeth Clarke. Pina Bausch Foundation, June 4, 2023: reflections on her artistic path and work with Béjart, Stockhausen, and Bausch.
• Professional acting profile. Current credits, performance background, and showreel.