Wolfgang Stange: A life in dance
View(s):“You are never too old if you really want to do something!”
These are the words by which our dear friend, Wolfgang Stange, lived his entire life.
Born in West Berlin in 1947, he lived through adversity from his earliest days. He painted vivid memories of his family home serving as a ‘safe house’ for people fleeing East Germany to the West. He himself fled his native Germany for a better life, moving to London in the late 1960s initially as a chef, but later to become one of the most accomplished artistic dance directors of his generation.
In London, he met the Sri Lankan artist George Beven – and together they shared their lives for the next 52 years splitting their time between Berlin, London and Negombo.
Wolfgang Stange: Many links to Sri Lanka
Wolfgang, often known as Wolf to his friends, was the consummate raconteur. A conversation with Wolf was more like a personal performance of hilarious anecdotes drawn from his whirlwind life. In his early days in West Berlin, he worked as a chef to the occupying British troops. The soldiers hated his food until one day he was asked to make soup but he didn’t know how. So, he just threw something together. Yet so impressed was the Major-General that he asked for it again the next day, but Wolf had no idea what he had made!
It was clear that the culinary life was not for Wolf. He moved in the late 1960s to London to improve his English. He was obsessed with Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev – saving his last English pennies to buy tickets to see them whenever he could. By chance, he met his future mentor Hilde Holger – an Expressionist dancer who survived Nazi Germany. She took no nonsense from a diffident Wolf who said he was too old to dance: “You are never too old if you really want to do something!”. She was right and Wolf the dancer was born.
From the very beginning, Wolf was drawn to dancing and teaching. He volunteered at a hospital for people with severe learning difficulties, founded by Dr Langdon Down (after whom the syndrome is named). This experience lit a passion in Wolf to bring dance to people living with disabilities. This passion came to be his greatest life work and his lasting legacy: the Amici Dance Theatre Company which he founded in 1980 (amicidance.org). Amici integrates disabled and non-disabled artists and performers in dance theatre and is based at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, London.
Amici will celebrate its 45th anniversary in 2025. The plan has been to put on an entirely new production entitled Amici: Out Timed, directed by Wolf in the last year of his life. The Amici Facebook page has advertised this as a performance that “…will celebrate the enduring relationship between two men against a turbulent historical landscape and explore society’s changing perceptions of same sex couples”. This production would honour Wolf’s relationship with his partner George, with whom they shared a lifetime and many challenging years during the Sri Lankan civil war.
We hope that it is still possible to mount this production as a testament to the impact of Amici over so many decades and as a tribute to Wolf himself.
The reach of Amici is far and wide, just like the life connections of Wolf himself. Wolf was determined in his last months to revisit Japan – once again to teach and to pass on his energy and enthusiasm for life and dance.
One of the strongest, dynamic and impactful relationships that Wolf enjoyed was with Sunethra Bandaranaike, founder of the Sunera Foundation (https://sunerafoundation.com/). Together, they raised the visibility of differently abled dance and promoted the interests and rights of persons living with disabilities. From 1988 until 2007, multiple workshops and many moving productions resulted from collaborations between these two organisations. Often these would involve injured soldiers from the Sri Lankan civil war and children and families who suffered because of the social strife.
A full-length dance drama was created by Wolf, with the assistance of Rohana Deva, entitled “Flowers Will Always Bloom”. This production was performed in Sri Lanka, London, New Delhi and Brisbane.
In all these performances and encounters, the central message was always the same: it was a message of hope and faith in the enduring goodness of humanity. As Wolf often said: “You’re never too disabled, too blind, too old or too proud to be able to perform.”
Wolfgang Stange was a performer all his life. In every essence of his being and in every corner of his life, he performed. He entertained us. He challenged us. Occasionally, he infuriated us! But always…he inspired us.
Wolfgang passed away in London on the night of 3rd December 2024 at the age of 77. He died knowing he was deeply loved. He left us happy to join his beloved George, who, Wolf said, was waiting for him at the end of his bedstead. Now they are together, forever.
Graeme Laurie and Ian Wattie
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