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Founded in 2020, the Laboratory for Social Choreography focuses on transforming social structures through aesthetics. It explores the fundamental role of embodiment in ethics, relations, and governance. As an interdisciplinary hub, the Lab researches and develops experimental ways to learn, move, and organize in response to the pressing issues of our time—from climate change to immigration to systemic racism to unfettered capitalism. It choreographs situations that connect artists, citizens, and intellectuals in an extraordinary climate of sensibility, empathy, and vigorous imagination.

We endeavour

  • To emancipate embodied knowledge to amend excessive rational, thought-processes in Western society.
  • To expand the social imagination through embodied, relational experiences.
  • To envision sustainable social structures upon an expanded awareness of human and non-human relations.
  • To design courses, interventions, and formats in response to academic and institutional stagnation.
  • To glean new visions of communion and their modes of governance.

“Social Choreography permeates the tightly knit fabric of socialization, for other potential realities to be sensed and experienced, and for new relational fields amongst human and non-human to be forged. The practice of Social Choreography deals with the uncovering of underlying social relations and patterns — the choreography of the social — through embodied practices, and always, engages these dynamics for new social choreographies to emerge simultaneously.”

— Michael Kliën

PROGRAMS

The LSC generates experiential strategies to overcome entrenched patterns of perception, ideas, assumptions and positions. The laboratory conducts experiments in the emerging field of Social Choreography, organizes events, designs interdisciplinary courses and publishes its outcomes in various media (print, online, performance, exhibitions, etc.).

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PARLIAMENT

Parliament is a pioneering work of situational choreography that has been situated around the world. It offers participants a critically needed withdrawal from normal modes of social action. A diverse cohort of citizen-performers, working in silence, comes together to hold council amidst the elemental phenomena and fundamental concerns of collectively lived experience.

  • Parliament, September 18, 2023, 6:00-9:00pm, Rubenstein Arts Center, von der Heyden Studio Theater

 

THE ART OF ASSEMBLY

The Art of Assembly is a nomadic series of talks and conversations exploring the potential of assembly in activism, art, and politics. This 25th edition of The Art of Assembly takes place in the context of Michael Kliën’s “Parliament,” a social choreography in which citizen-performers work in silence to hold council amidst the elemental phenomena and fundamental concerns of collectively-lived experience.

 

11th Organ I

In this uninterrupted, six-hour experimental and performative symposium from choreographer Michael Kliën, audiences come-and-go as 15 invited guests speak together, drawing from disparate fields of knowledge and free associations to create a matrix of collective thought.

  • 11th Organ I, December 5, 2023, 4:00-10:00pm, Rubenstein Arts Center, von der Heyden Studio Theater

11th Organ II

Performed in the round, the second part of the 11th Organ will be an immersive social choreographic situation centered around a group of performers, who temporarily envision themselves inhabiting a shared imaginary space.

  • 11th Organ II, April 11, 2024, 7:30pm, Rubenstein Arts Center, von der Heyden Studio Theater
  • 11th Organ II, April 12, 2024, 8:00pm, Rubenstein Arts Center, von der Heyden Studio Theater

THE NEXT INSTITUTION

In 2022, the LSC is launching an interdisciplinary research project to design the blueprint of a new cultural institution. The proposed institution will engage citizens in exploring, creating and performing potential futures. Specifically conceived for the context of European social democracies and emanating from the arts, the institution will seek to envision comprehensive, cultural solutions to the complex challenges of our times. This envisioning will be achieved by connecting artists, citizens, and intellectuals in an extraordinary climate of heightened sensibility, empathy, play, and vigorous imagination. The new institution will expand the historically specific (and therefore limited) objectives of theatres, museums, opera houses, concert halls, and community centers to chart new pathways for social expression and organization.

— Social Dreaming facilitation sessions in partnership with the Centre for Social Dreaming in London; free and open to Duke graduate students and faculty. Sessions will be conducted virtually on Zoom.

— Parliament/Amendment facilitation workshops for Duke and international graduate students. All sessions will be held in person at Duke East Campus.

— Seeding the first comprehensive Wikipedia page on Social Choreography drawing from various national and international contributors.

— All core-events will be professionally documented and published on the LSC’s website.

— Publications of a small book on the work Parliament, commissioned by the Segal Theater Center at CUNY

— Kenan Institute of Ethics awards a second-year Fellowship to one MFA student whose proposed social choreographic work aligns with, and extends, the mission of Kenan Institute of Ethics and the LSC.

Researchers and Collaborators

Affiliates