Composer. Producer. Ballet Dancer. Teacher. These titles describe Hannah Lena Rebel, a 23-year-old Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), a prestigious group comprising the best and brightest minds encompassing art, music, public policy and scientific endeavors that dates back to 1754. The RSA boasts names such as Judi Dench, Michael Faraday, Colin Powell, Charles Dickens, Herbie Hancock and Mary Moser. Rebel received this honor in April. She is also a member of Mensa International, a Fellow of the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry and a member of the International Society for Intelligence Research.
“In 2023, I was nominated for the Royal Society of Arts and joined it,” Rebel recalled. “After a wonderful RSA meeting I attended in Glasgow and several connections on the RSA’s platform Circle, I was asked whether or not I would like to apply for the RSA’s Young Fellows Advisory Board. As my ambition to do so flared up, I took lots of courses and got certificates and mini-MBAs in Business Administration, Leadership, Project Management, Innovation Management, Calculus Applied and many more. In September 2023, I was chosen to be a part of the Advisory Board.”
Rebel’s time with the RSA has allowed her to make connections and collaborate with a host of other artists and innovators, such as Petra Stefankova, a globally recognized artist from Slovakia.
“In September 2023, I connected with Petra Stefankova,” said Rebel. “As we sat together, we came up with a fruitful idea that led to several successful collaborations. We started with one of my philosophical books, The Fly on the Honey Bread, for which she provided beautiful illustrations. Then, I thought about my little children’s opera and converted the story into a book called Whimsical Wonders: A Toy Store’s Timeless Tales and asked her to illustrate it. Her illustrations not only perfectly match the story but can also uncover buried emotions in such an innocent and, at the same time, profound way.”
The RSA also allowed Rebel to receive honors with her mentor and former university instructor, Walter Werrzowa, a well-known Austrian-American film music composer.
“In March, I had the honor to fly to London for the RSA’s Fellow Festival, for which Walter Werzowa and I were chosen,” Rebel recalled. “Walter gave a speech about ‘Courage in Music’ and how the right music can positively affect our health in various ways. I was performing on the piano to show the decline or rise of human heart rates through different kinds and styles of music.”
The RSA listed Rebel in their “50 Famous Fellows” list in the March 2024 issue of the RSA Journal, an honor Rebel expressed immense gratitude.
“It made me beyond grateful to get listed in the RSA’s ‘50 Famous Fellows’ list,” said Rebel. “The RSA has a history of over 270 years, and to be listed together with Fellows like Theodor Roosevelt, Henry Cole, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, John Howard, Michael Faraday, Charles Dickens, Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, Herbie Hancock and Vivienne Westwood means a lot to me. In June, I was invited to the RSA President’s Dinner with Her Royal Highness (HRH) Anne, Princess Royal, in the RSA House in London, where I had the chance to talk to HRH, the speakers and inspiring Fellows who also had the honor to be invited to this truly special and memorable event.”
Rebel’s journey to this distinction began in her early childhood. Rebel was born May 21, 2001, in Vienna, Austria. I asked her to go back to the beginning to where it all started.
“When I was three years old, I very intuitively composed a piece in three parts on an old little Casio keyboard of the 1970s and called it ‘The Dying Flower’,” said Rebel. “For me, this flower represented a human being in different states of life. At about the same time, I was regularly being presented and watching rehearsals of various theater and dance productions my aunt was choreographing. Every time an orchestra was present, and the musicians tuned their instruments, I got the chance to hear the tone A, which helped me develop a perfect pitch over time.”
Rebel’s parents recognized her musical talent, but she started her journey as a ballet dancer when her parents enrolled her in classes when she was still three years old. At age six, her blossoming career progressed as she received acceptance to the renowned Ballet Academy of the Vienna State Opera. Rebel went on to study Dance at the Music and Arts University in Vienna. Her dance studies at schools were in addition to private lessons nearly every day, night, weekend and holiday.
“It was a hard and stressful time, but it was also a time of many wonderful performances in operas like Nabucco or The Magic Flute at the State Opera, at the ‘Summer Nights Concert’ in Schönbrunn 2011, in theaters like the MuTh, Odeon, Theater Akzent, Werk X and in a few films, documentaries and more,” Rebel described.
Rebel was no stranger to challenges growing up. There were the pressures that came with her studies, but also an inner hunger to connect and understand the world around her.
“During my childhood and youth, there has often been a profound but driving melancholy inside of me, a deep feeling of really wanting to understand what existence was all about,” Rebel stated. “Besides dancing and training, I expressed myself by experimenting on the piano, by writing philosophical stories and by walking through the forest while forgetting my surroundings and delving into a world of imagination.”
In addition to being a musical prodigy, Rebel displayed early signs of being intellectually gifted as well. She was four when she learned how to read, write and count backward from 1000. Rebel scored out of the measurement range on her intelligence tests before entering primary school. She credits her family’s support and influence as being vital to her early successes.
“My family was always supporting and inspiring me,” Rebel noted. “My mum had been studying Philosophy, Psychology and History and was working as a teacher and deputy headmistress; my aunt was working as a choreographer for the prominent Salzburg Festival in Austria. My grandparents were already retired and had lots of time to tell me their stories.”
Rebel describes the isolation that came with being academically gifted and how institutions such as Mensa International gave her a place of belonging and more opportunities to exercise her abilities.
“Because I didn’t have many friends and was very introverted, I one day tried to find a community of people by joining Mensa International, a society for highly gifted people, at age 16,” Rebel recalled. “Because I had scored out of the measurement range of the tests that I had done, I also got the opportunity to join several more exclusive societies, for example, the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry, also known as ‘The Thousander’ for people whose IQ was above 99.9 percent of the world’s population. There, I advanced from the rank of ‘Member’ to ‘Fellow’ and then to ‘Senior Fellow’ and regularly provided them with my philosophical and allegorical texts called ‘Musical Phenomena in Everyday Life’ for their quarterly journal, Telicom.”
Rebel’s musical education progressed in high school as she took specialized courses in music and piano. After graduating, she attended Prayner Conservatory in Vienna, majoring in Composition and Conducting. Rebel did her master’s degree at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (MDW), where she chose to major in Media Composition with a concentration in Film Scoring. It was at MDW where she first met and studied under Walter Werzowa.
“My later studies were exceptionally fruitful, as they inspired and enhanced my musical career because Walter helped us to get in touch with and work in the real music industry,” said Rebel. “He also made us familiar with all the practical aspects of music productions, like rehearsals with an orchestra, as we recorded sessions at the university and the Synchron Stage Vienna. We learned the whole post-production process, including editing, mixing and mastering.”
Rebel credits Werzowa as being a mentor and inspiration throughout her studies at MDW until today. Inspiration is a much-needed resource for Rebel, who wears many creative hats in her various roles as a composer, choreographer and instructor.
“Walter has been, is, and will always be a wonderful and inspiring mentor to me in all creative aspects, and I can always go to him and ask him anything that comes to my mind,” said Rebel. “I also enjoy spending time in nature to replenish my creative energy, or I try to do nothing and exist for a short time, which certainly isn’t always easy.”
*Part one of a two-part series
Featured image: Photo by Laura Aziz
Edited by: James Sutton
