Daniel Hellmann - 3art3 Company

Daniel Hellmann | Director, performer, composer & artistic director of 3ART3

Daniel Hellmann studied philosophy, classical singing and theatre / performance in Zurich, Lausanne and Bern. Since 2012, he has been developing his own artistic works, which have been programmed as part of performing arts networks in Switzerland and abroad, and at a number of cultural and political events dealing with issues of human domination over animals and the major challenges of ecological sustainability in the performing arts. His plays have won numerous awards. Daniel Hellmann sees his artistic practice as a form of intersectional activism. His projects explore the body, interspecies relations and desire, and question social norms and power relations in the areas of sexuality, human rights and animals.

As part of his interactive performance Full Service  (2014), Hellmann has executed hundreds of services around the world for a corresponding negotiated fee. His solo performance Traumboy  (2015) on male sex work was selected for Sélection Suisse en Avignon first edition 2016 and for Swiss Selection Edinburgh the new Pro Helvetia’s program for the festival 2019. Daniel Hellmann also developed Traumgirl, in collaboration with Anne Welenc - his third production about sexwork, created in august 2019 and performed alternaly with Traumboy during Edimburgh Fringe Festival.

Since 2017, Hellmann’s work has increasingly focused on the relationships between humans and animals. The music theatre performance Requiem for a piece of meat (2017) was awarded the June Johnson Dance Prize and invited to the Swiss Dance Days 2019 at Vidy Lausanne.

In 2019 he has also created the performance All in with Layton Lachman and Anne Welenc, on triadic love relationships. With his alter ego Soya The Cow  - a sex-positive, feminist and vegan drag cow, Hellmann also appears in theaters, panel discussions and night clubs and recorded his first music album. In 2020, he created Soya The Cow : Dear Human Animals at the Gessnerallee Zürich. 

In 2022, he offers a whole range of artistic forms with Soya The Cow: performance, concert, exhibition, excursions and mediations, which, after having been presented to Swiss, German and UK audiences, met audiences in Seattle, Kansas City, Houston and Los Angeles during a tour organised with the Goethe Institute.

Soya The Cow took over the Théâtre Saint-Gervais as part of the Festival Antigel 2023 - audiences rediscovered the streets of Saint-Gervais in Geneva with Soya's artistic walk Try Walking in My Hooves, the theatre's exhibition space with Planet Moo' the restaurant with the Valentine's Day dinner Mange avec ton coeur, followed by the show 'Dear Human Animals'. DH has been invited to be an associate artist at the Journées du Théâtre Suisse 2023 in Fribourg. He has been selected by Pro Helvetia for a residency on the theme of 'queer ecologies' in South-East Asia in Taiwan and Hong Kong during the summer of 2023. In September 2023, Soya The Cow becomes the House cow of the Tanzhaus Zürich and will open the 2023 - 2024 season with two festive performances for the celebrations of the '4 years Tanzhaus Zürich & Nude' (02.09), then on the programme of the Centre Culturel Suisse. On Tour as part of the Festival Tendres Monstres at the Théâtre de la Cité internationale in Paris, Soya The Cow - Try Walking In My Hooves will take the audience on a wander from the theatre grounds, through the streets of the district, to the Fondation Suisse (22 and 23.09.2023), followed by Soya The Cow - Dear Human Animals on the theatre stage (24.09.2023).

In addition to his own works, Hellmann has created other pieces in variable artistic collaborations - Untold  in coproduction with Les Ballets C. de la B., Nach Lampedusa – Wandererfantasien, about the Swiss asylum system, with Ursina Greuel & Samuel Fried (2014).

Between 2018 and 2020, Daniel Hellmann has been curating the performing arts for the interdisciplinary gender and sexualities festival la Fête du Slip in Lausanne.