Surrounded by you

I sit surrounded by you.
I sit in your home in Sydney with so much of you hugging me... as I prepare for my day, as I sit and eat my dinner, as I contemplate where I go next.
It's so lovely to have you close to me once again.
I'll never forget you smile, I'll never forget your infectious cheeky styles and I'll smile every time I feel you brush through my thoughts.
Words may not come through so often but thoughts of you flow constantly.
I can feel you smile warmth on us and I know you would be so proud of what the gang is doing.
I miss you and I will always love you.
Craig xxx

Sieben Monate! Tanja,
Wie oft habe ich all die lieben Worte im Blog für dich und über dich gelesen. Sie sind so wahr! Danke an alle, die mir Hoffnung geben. Du lebst in jedem von uns weiter und zeigst uns den Weg. Du bist in jedem Herzen und deine Liebe vervielfältigt sich auf diese Weise. Wir reisen morgen nach Spanien, wo du so glücklich deine Kindheit verbrachtest. Auch auf dieser Reise bist du bei uns. Wir hören nicht auf an dich zu glauben und versuchen all deine Träume zu erfüllen. Wir lieben dich immer.
Gerlinde

footloose and fancy free

Tread Lightly baby x

MAGPIE

thankyou for my 2 birds i saw you there perched + watching. I felt you so deeply today. warm and so hard together. I just really miss you now. my deep love always x

Each Day a New Beginning

You are there...... you are every where. I know you want to say something. Maybe I gotta listen a little harder, right to the center of my heart. Thats where you are. You never left and I never forgot and never will. Such small things are the beauty in your eyes. Those exquisite green emeralds. I can see them now....feel them watching in the moonlight.
It's so thrilling that so many new beginnings are created with the essence of your life.
Thank you for reminding me tonight.

Sol i send you infinite love. Always there....never far.

Construct crew....the brave hearts who share one voice and vision. Embrace the difference and dance like there is no tomorrow.

All my love
Mooma xxx

build anew

we start rehearsals monday and construct again.
Your knife edge clarity is missed, I will be losing me in you again trying to keep the voice strong, Thank heavens for Kris and Paul. Mattana is here, perfect sister cool and ready. She is here to be perfect her.
I just wish you could be with us at the Oaks for our beer and barbie styles. I know I cant go partying and scotch sampling girly style like you.
big pop ons to you sweetness.
anytime, anything xxxx

Hey Babe,
You should have seen the place in Adelaide a few Fridays ago.
Smiles, Tears, Laughter, Singing, Silence.
A place to sit with you, to talk with you, to find that inspiration you give so freely.
We watched you grace the screen once again and once again the tears flowed freely down my face. It took with them some of that pain I had inside, pain that I had not forgotten but had simply shelved behind other emotions.
You can't get away from me my darling friend. I feel close to you. If I close my eyes and hold out my hand you might just take it... And I wish you would.
Lisa and I are going for it... we put in our application to create a new work... Sol gave us his precious time and helped us so much with the application. He even opened our eyes more to what we are creating and why. You should have seen his eyes. They lit up with excitement. His passion is so inspiring. He is a gem... no wonder you were flying...
I love you Tanja.
We miss you so much!

Adelaide style

A truly magic place. A beautiful bench from John Leathart with a pink flowering gum to grow with our memories, sit outside the green room at Adelaide Festival Centre and take a moment. Thankyou to the special Adelaide team. Put on your red shoes and dance

birthday babe

our season of the year little one.
x

Happy Birthday!!!

Dearest Tanja,
thoughts of you flowed through the entire day on Saturday, happy birthday funny girl!!!! My little sweetie touched my shoulder as I cried, her eyes wide and soft.

Happy birthday dear one we toast your day, we drink with sadness but also with delicious memories.... one being that catch up night in London. I am not sure if I ever told you but Christian and I had just found out for sure that I was pregnant with Grace by doing a third (!!!) pregancy test in the toilet just before you turned up!!!! That was the silly grin on our faces. And then you guys arrived and we drank to art, life and being in Europe. Delicious memories.

Happy Birthday Dear Tanja, happy birthday!

Love Helen, Christian and Grace

30 times infinity more

hey sweetness well we missed you but did it in huge liedtke family style, the bosch orchestra and choir had me in tears with Mozarts requiem, the huge splendorous church filled with half of spain and germany all filled with your childhood magic in their eyes. You so should have been there you nonger, thanks for sending me in your place! Still I worked on finger turns with Tahlia who it seems is set on being a singer and dancer and sure didnt mind the spotlight of a pressage in amongst the entire crowd, yes your boy was being outrageous again but hey if you wil leave me on my own!!
Happy birthday beautiful, got me here crying again. I love you I love You I love you please just come on home soon I dont like it without you. Lets make spoons. kisses galore on your soft cheeks till then seeya soon sexy one xxxxxlove infinity ulli

30 years today...
You were born...
30 years this world had the pleasure of you...
Today I had your picture in my hand and Kristina sent me a birthday message...
I was so angry that I almost couldn't breath.. but the image of you stopped me completely and I made a birthday wish... I can't wait for the moment when I see you standing in your addidas suit with your arms open wide and a smile on your face.
We celebrate you with our love, with our memories and with a group of people standing hand in hand...
Tomorrow we have a drink for you...
I love you dear friend and still feel you will walk into my life with a cheeky grin and a crazy story...
30 + more we wanted...
I love you Tanja...
Happy Birthday

30 today

My sweet precious friend for life, I just wanted to wish you a Happy 30th Birthday. I am so sad. I still can not believe that this is real. I wanted to grow old with you. It's just so crazy. I miss you so much. You were so young. You will be eternally young. I love you

pablo

If only Tanja could respond herself to all of you wonderful people, whose hearts are filled with so much warmth, compassion, and the joy knowing her. You have all given her a new stage in the corridors of your memories and the platform of your hearts. I would like to bring to you all a poem by Pablo Neruda – one of the most beautiful love poems ever written. I am forwarding it for Tanja, hoping that it is alright with her.

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

tribute

Tomorrow we celebrate your life. It's still completely unreal so I have been fine now for some time, although I have no idea how our tribute will affect me. you are so vivid still. It's kind of like we are playing at all this and I'm ready for you to come back now. I have you in my ear now...'no, dont write that, put this..., no, thats not me, sounds silly' etc. It's turning to Autumn now, outside and inside me.. as the reality slowly sets in after a loud summer. I wonder what you would want me to do tomorrow, what to say to everyone, how can we create some kind of phoenix from the situation... strength, courage, compassion and an renewed curiosity in places, things, ultimately people.. strangers and loved ones.
I feel supported and encouraged by you every day. I miss you x

A tear for you

Tanja
Today I cried for you. I haven't in a while.
I turned 30 on Friday and as expected we had a pretty big bash. It was fun. But you were missing.
Today I got a package from my Paul from London. In it was a DVD he had made for me.
It had many beautiful and wonderful people in it, and for a moment all there was was a lit candle in the dark and very softly and slowly your name appeared from the darkness. Thoughts of you came flooding in like images of photos in a flick book. I cried for you and I remembered you. I smiled and loved you like I always have and always will.
Babe I'm creating a new work with Lisa now!.... I never thought that would happen.... You just wont stop inspiring us will you.... Somehow you are in every movement... Thanks my friend.
You guide me everyday you know....
I miss you
Craig xxx

from... Mariane Grebner

It was good to know you
Too short, but lively, true,
Beautiful like a summer breeze,
Great memory that will not cease.
It is so hard to lez you go.
We miss you but still feel your flow
Of inspiration, strength, joy,art.
You will be always in my heart.
We cry the tears we cannot hide.
Your soul still dances by our side.

4 weeks

so nearly 4 weeks and she continues to hide around every single corner catching me out like little twigs catching loose threads in my jumper which starts the sorrowful process of inevitable unravelling, feels like it will just continue disintegrating unwinding off me till I stand naked in tears with goose bumps and anger.

She is too precious to lose and way too hard to let go. cant we bundle each other up for snuggles. hold your loved ones tight till you cannot last a moment without another breath.

I believe in poetry now my god. I share this thankyou justine

you have closed your eyes

A night is born
full of hidden wounds,

of dead sounds
as of corks
when the nets are let down to the water

Your hands become a breath
of inviolable distances,
slippery as thoughts,

And that equivocation of the moon
and that gentlest rocking,

if you would lay them on my eyes,
touch the soul.

You are the woman who passes by like a leaf

leaving an autumn fire in the trees.

(Stanley Kunitz's Meditations on Death)

The way she was.... from Boris Liedtke

There were a lot of press reports when Tanja was appointed artistic director of the Sydney Dance Company – most of them talking about Tanja’s new vision and the courageous move by the board to appoint such a young and relatively inexperienced person to the position.

While Tanja was indeed young, she was certainly not inexperienced. In fact as an older brother, I recall her first role as an artistic director and general manager of a dance company at the age of six. “Age six, you might say – that is below the legal working age.”

Let me elaborate …

Patrick, Tanja and I grew up in a household where our father administered our weekly pocket money like a pay check in a company. Our allowance, while generous, was pretty much all we got to spend and if we wanted to have more, we had to be creative. Washing cars and cutting the lawn gave us a little extra but it was hard work and it soon became our dream to combine the work with something that was actually fun to do.

Patrick and I hit on the idea of organising slot car races between the two of us and charge our parents for watching little plastic cars race around the track in the living room. Needless to say that the novelty wore of sooner than we had hoped for and after the third race, the audience stayed away and the idea was abandoned.

Well, it did not take long before our 6-year old sister Tanja picked up on the idea and perfected it. Instead of slot car races, she reached out to her friends in the neighbourhood and choreographed little drama and dance performances. For days, kids between the ages of 4 and 10 came to our home for rehearsals. Being business minded, she not only invited our mum and dad but instead reached out to every parent of any kid in the play and pre-sold them tickets for the show and trust me, there were as many performers in those shows as kids in the neighbourhood. No one was left out because that is just the way she was.

On show day, our house was full of parents and kids and then Tanja would get her team ready, tell the grown-ups to sit down and order the performers around the little make-shift stage. Everything had to work like clockwork to satisfy her drive for perfection because that is just the way she was.

The shows were almost always a success apart from perhaps the odd forgotten line by a 3-year old actor or a wrong dance turn by a six-year old dancer. Tanja probably made more money in her first show than my brother and I ever made from slot car races. I was never crossed with her from taking our idea and perfecting it. To the contrary, I was happily spending my own hard-earned pocket money to see my little sister’s show.

Come to think of it, I never asked her what she did with all the money from those tickets. Though knowing her, she must have split it all up and distributed it to her performers and helpers starting with the very youngest because that is just the way she was.

"Hopes struck down – Dreams re-Construct-ed"...from the Liedtke family

We, the friends and family, will remember a 10-month old Tanja standing on her little stumpy legs for the first time. The arts world will remember her dancing on stage with those same legs, now long and slender.
We will remember a one-year old birthday child with curly brown hair holding a little coloured ball between her fingers. The arts world will remember those same long limbs gracefully moving through the air describing her vision for the next scene.
We will remember a lively six-year old directing her friends to private shows at home. The world will remember her brilliant choreography of understandable modern dance performances.
And all of us could leave it at that – memories of the past, pictures from by-gone years, articles about her success and tragic death in fading newspapers - hopes of what might have been.

Or we could take those pieces and reconstruct new dreams into a world without Tanja, the person, but a world reflecting her vision.

For Tanja, Modern dance was meant for all of us. It was to communicate a message, which the casual theatregoer could understand. In her early pieces, such as “Forever You”, the topics were of love and relationships. As she matured, the messages became statements, bolder almost forceful. First in the highly acclaimed “Twelfth Floor” where she analysed group behaviour in a closed space. Followed by “Construct” where she spoke about building and destruction of career, home and family. Her next piece would have tackled the environment. Seeking inspiration for this piece, she attended Bangarra Dance Theatre performing “True Stories” at the Opera House. Returning late and full of new ideas, she turned to her usual place for reflection. Walking along the dark and abandoned streets of her favourite city, Sydney, her mind was integrating those ideas into her vision for an understandable yet complex piece on the environment. Perhaps fate, perhaps consciously wanting to connect to her professional beginnings in Australia, her steps were leading her towards the studio where she trained with her admired teacher – Tanya Pearson. Here, her vision ended.

We dream that the dance world takes this vision around the world and reconstructs it in her name.

For us, family and friends, we will take her patience, generosity and love to pass it to the next generation as best we can so that they can dream as much of Tanja as we had hoped for.