Born Phillippine Baush, on July 27th, 1940 into a publican family in Solingen, she discovered her love of dance at an early age and joined children’s ballet classes where her talent was recognised. In 1955 she began a professional dance education at the Folkwang School in Essen, led by Kurt Jooss, a pioneer of the revolutionary 1920s/30s German movement Ausdruckstanz (‘expressive dance’), completing the course in 1959. The most important values she took from her work with Jooss were ‘honesty and precision’, as she later put it: honesty in approaching reality and precision in developing form. After two years in New York, initially with a scholarship for the renowned Juilliard School of Music, then as a dancer at the New American Ballet and at the Metropolitan Opera House Ballet, she returned to Essen in 1962 on Jooss’ request as a soloist at the newly founded Folkwang Dance Studio. Here she worked with Jooss, Antony Tudor, Lucas Hoving, Hans Züllig and above all Jean Cébron. At the end of the 1960s she gained attention with her first choreographies, including Im Wind der Zeit (‘in the wind of time’), for which she won first prize in the Cologne choreography competition.
Sila Blume 
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