[1] Although he had a background in gymnastics, he only began serious dance training when he moved to Cologne in 1962, where he studied with Leon Wojcikowski and Aurel von Miloss.
[1][2] By the time he left Austria, Kresnik had joined the Austrian Communist Party, and he took part in numerous political demonstrations in Germany during the 1960s.
[3] Kresnik works within the tradition of Tanztheater and Expressionist dance pioneered by Kurt Jooss (whose piece The Green Table he greatly admired) and Mary Wigman.
His outspokenness, Marxist politics, championship of cultural outsiders, and often extreme choreography have earned him a reputation as an enfant terrible and the nickname "Berserker".
(1968, about the assassination of student activist Rudi Dutschke), Sylvia Plath (1985), Ulrike Meinhof (1990), Frida Kahlo (1992), Francis Bacon (1993), Ernst Jünger (1994), and Hannelore Kohl (2004), have been focused around the troubled lives and achievements of well-known individuals.
[2] Ulrike Meinhof is considered the German performance world's first major attempt to grapple with the impact of the Red Army Faction on the country's culture.
[8] He had worked on even at a ripe old age, so he presented the revival of his piece Macbeth from 1988 with the ensemble TANZLIN.Z, which opened Vienna International Dance Festival ImPulsTanz 2019 on 11 July 2019.