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 IN 2022/23
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.).
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. This year, one Parliament will be organized by the LSC at the Von Der Heyden Studio Theater of the Rubenstein Arts Center at Duke University, bringing together diverse communities from Duke and Durham, and providing an unusual and innovative site for 21st-century experimentalist cooperation. In addition, the LSC is preparing the national presentation of Parliament as well as publishing a book about Parliament in partnership with the CUNY Segal Center.
- Parliament, November 29, 2022, 6:00-8:30pm, Rubenstein Arts Center, von der Heyden Studio Theater
AMENDMENT
Amendment offers a container to reform our relationship to ‘the other’ in times of irreversible damage to our environment. The work provides cultural citizens (workers, teachers, immigrants, poets, etc.) rare, lived experiences in movement, and seeks to temporarily transcend the human/non-human divide into a relationship of reciprocal belonging. This year, one Amendment will be organized by the LSC at the Von Der Heyden Studio Theater of the Rubenstein Arts Center at Duke University, offering those who participate a chance to reimagine their place in the social ecology of the present and the future.
- Amendment, March 28, 2023, 6:00-8:30pm, Rubenstein Arts Center, von der Heyden Studio Theater
MESHROOM
Meshroom is a performance environment on Duke’s campus for an intellectual community to form around an open dancefloor. The work is shaped by the action, hopes, queerness, and dreams of all those in the room: a weaving of wild minds and soft bodies. Open to all, participants are welcome to move, rest, witness, think, melt, and dance with live music and occasional performances.
- Meshroom, September 22, 2022, 7:00-9:00pm, The Ark Dance Studio
- Meshroom, November 17, 2022, 7:00-9:00pm, The Ark Dance Studio
- Meshroom, February 23, 2023, 7:00-9:00pm, The Ark Dance Studio
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.
Our Team
Michael Kliën | Founder, Director
Michael Kliën is an internationally recognized choreographer and artist. His work has been presented by leading art-institutions around the world. Kliën is concerned with a socio- political praxis of choreography and dance, often referred to as “Social Choreography.” His practice encompasses interdisciplinary thinking, writing, moving, teaching, curation, and centrally, choreographic works equally at home in performing and visual arts. He is Professor of the Practice in Dance, Director of the MFA in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis, and Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute of Ethics at Duke University. www.michaelklien.com
Steve Valk | Co-Founder
Steve Valk is a contemporary dance dramaturge, visual artist and designer, lecturer and leading figure in the emerging field of Social Choreography. Influenced by his experiences as Personal Assistant of theatre director Robert Wilson (1988—90) he joined Ballett Frankfurt as Head Dramaturge and creative collaborator for William Forsythe (1992—2004). From 1998 to 2004, this dramaturgical practice and a subsequent focus on trans-disciplinary networking strategies lead to the development of a new participatory/situational epistemology for the institution of contemporary dance. From 2004 to 2011, Steve Valk became Dramaturge and artistic collaborator of Ireland’s Daghdha Dance Company. In 2007 founder of the international dramaturgical and social choreographic design agency r.i.c.e. He has been the Director of the Institute of Social Choreography in Frankfurt, where he currently lives.
Jeffrey Gormly | Affiliate Member
Jeffrey Gormly has been engaged with social choreographic praxis since he led the Framemakers project in 2005 with collaborators Michael Klien and Steve Valk. He co-authored the Book of Recommendations, edited Choreography as an Aesthetics of Change, and was editor of choreograph.net from 2006-2012. He collaborates with Michael Klien on many of his seminal Social Choreographic works, as well as working with or being commissioned by the Irish National Theatre (The Abbey), National Folk Theatre, Irish Chamber Orchestra, IMMA, Dance Ireland and many more. He was Creative Director of award-winning social enterprise Buddy Bench. Jeffrey is currently working in practice with expansions of creative processes in organisations, and in theory with new metaphors for social organism and states of dance.
Alexander Strecker | Graduate Research Fellow
Alexander Strecker is pursuing a PhD in Art, Art History and Visual Studies. His research focuses on contemporary cultural production in Athens, Greece. How do the visual arts register the contradictions inherent in capitalism and modernity as well as the crises brought on by enduring coloniality? His work explores how these tensions have been felt acutely in Greece since 2008, but resonate worldwide. Drawing on his Greek heritage, his methodology applies practices of care and community-building in order to enact, after Sedgwick, a “reparative” approach to art history. At Duke, he is part of S-1 Lab (Speculative Sensation) and the Laboratory for Social Choreography. He has presented his research at the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts (SLSA), transmediale, and the École normale supérieure in Paris. He has collaborated with various arts organizations across Europe: the Onassis Foundation, ARTWORKS, Athens Photo Festival, VOID, Kunst Haus Wien, Paris Photo, Art Basel, as well as Yo-Yo Ma’s Bach Project.
Vitoria Kotsalu | Affiliate Member
Vitoria Kotsalou is a psychologist, and a self-trained dancer, performer, and choreographer based in Athens. Her eclectic training, not bound by one tradition, and constant research from many different fields of discipline and philosophy carve out new fields of engagement for dance. As choreographer and artist she is interested in creating, contextualising and forming new frameworks for a wider understanding and application of dance. Her artistic practice integrates interdisciplinary thinking and application, the cultivation of a social dimension of choreography, while establishing her own personal practice of dance and presence. Vitoria approaches dance as a phenomena of life, that has the potential to touch all socio-political aspects of society. Vitoria is one of the founding members of the non-profit organisation R.I.C.E. on the island of Hydra. Since 2006, her work has been presented by the Onassis Foundation, Athens Festival, and elsewhere across Greece.
Alyah Baker | Kenan Fellow in Social Choreography
MFA in Dance candidate Alyah Baker was drawn to movement as a form of self-expression at an early age and has found her passion and purpose in this calling as an adult. As a Black, Queer, Woman, her identity informs her creative endeavors and has led her to a life at the intersection of art, social justice, and embodied activism. In her research, Baker is committed to foregrounding the body as she examines power, the politics of place, and identity. Through practice and performance, she explores how tapping into subjugated corporeal knowledge(s) might move our society towards a space of liberation and possibility, particularly for BIPOC and LGBTQIA communities.
Juliet Irving | Graduate Student
Juliet Irving is an artist, designer, and choreographer currently residing in Durham, NC as she earns an MFA in Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis and Master’s Certificate in African & African-American Studies at Duke University. A graduate of Appalachian State University with a BA in Dance Studies and BFA in Graphic Design, her work merges artforms into immersive environmental installations centering the embodied experiences of Black women. Manifesting in multimodal forms her work has presented in Catherine Smith Gallery, HOW Space Gallery, The Schaefer Center for Performing Arts, Valbourg Theatre and featured in The Peel Literature & Arts Review. She has a commissioned piece on view as part of the Dave Robertson Permanent Art Collection at Appalachian State University.
Courtney Liu | Graduate Student
Courtney Liu is a dance teacher, researcher, and choreographer who is currently pursuing her MFA at Duke University. She has taught dance nationally and internationally for the past 15 years and choreographed a variety of dance performances and films. Courtney’s choreographic research animates unapologetic embodiment and engaged artistic flow states as it grows in a circuitous feedback loop with her pedagogical research on body image and ballet. Courtney has performed with the Broadway cast of the Phantom of the Opera, Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, Queen of the Night, Peridance Contemporary Company, and the Cincinnati Ballet.
Susan Webb, MD | Graduate Student
Originally from New York City, I grew up dancing ballet in a vibrant artistic community. After receiving a B.A. in English literature from Rice University, a desire to delve deeper into the human experience led to an M.D. from Baylor College of Medicine and post-graduate residency training in medicine and psychiatry at Harvard and Emory University. I have spent the last two decades practicing integrative medicine and holistic psychiatry, with a focus on the complex mind-body connection. My work will be at the nexus between the neural, the creative, and the spiritual: the seat of the expressive impulse. Central is the unique ability of music and rhythm to penetrate the body consciousness and effect intrapsychic and somatic integration. My goal is to develop a new movement paradigm that will be broadly relevant to a spectrum of physical and mental disturbances, and an essential lifestyle tool to maintain health and wellness. My personal creative work explores the human dimension of medicine, the experience of the healer, and considers myth, duality and other often undiscussed themes in the doctor-patient relationship.
Ludovica Bachschmid-Romano | Postdoctoral Associate, Department of Neurobiology
Ludovica is a postdoc in Nicolas Brunel's group, where she investigates the neural underpinnings of movement. Her research combines theoretical and computational techniques to study the interplay between motor planning and motor execution and to address the question of learning in the motor system. She obtained a MSc in Physics from the University of Milan and a PhD in Computer Science at the Technical University of Berlin, with a thesis at the interface between statistical physics and machine learning.
Renata Garces | Graduate Students
I'm working in biophysics, but am deeply attracted to dance. I question myself about the gap between the self and the apparent self; about the bridge between the-me-and-you; on the force fields that mold us individually and together. What do our bodies say about that? Probably everything. I arrived at contemporary dance in my adulthood. It was a transformative experience. I consider dance as a unique tool to research the human condition.
Bree Von Bradsky | Graduate Student
Bree von Bradsky is an experimental filmmaker in her second year of the Experimental and Documentary Arts MFA program. Through various mediums—letting the project decide between digital and analog—she explores themes of place, sexuality, and identity by means of disorientation. Her current work utilizes the Prelinger Archive of home videos, edited in the style of a collage film, to tell a personal story of not belonging in a place that was once home. What interests her most is the making of new worlds through cinematic practices.
Nicole Schwartz | Undergraduate
Nicole Schwartz is an undergraduate student at Duke studying Dance, on the pathways of social activism and being and healing, and literature. She is particularly interested in theory and poetry as a lens through which she can see dance and movement as a revolutionary practice. Deleuze and Guattari, Robin Kelley, along with Black feminist writers such as Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, Saidiya Hartman are various writers moving and influencing her at the present moment.
Negar Mottahedeh | Faculty
Negar Mottahedeh is a cultural critic and film theorist specializing in interdisciplinary and feminist contributions to the fields of Middle Eastern Studies and Film Studies. She is known for her work on Iranian Cinema, but has also published on the history of reform and revolution, on 'Abdu'l-Baha's vision of human solidarity and peace in the 20th century, on Bábism, Qajar history, performance traditions in Iran, the history of technology, visual theory, Majid Tavakoli and the Men in Scarves Movement (also known as the "I am Majid" campaign), and the role of social media in the 2009–2010 Iranian election protests. With the publication of #iranelection: Hashtag Solidarity and the Transformation of online life in 2015, she expanded her focus to the cultures and practices of the web, writing on the political efficacy of selfies, memes and gifs in The Hill (2017),and pieces on internet security and Iranian hacker culture on WIRED's platform Backchannel (2017) She also wrote articles for Observer, covering the effects of President Trump's travel ban, and the persecution of the Jews and the Baháʼí (2017). She received her Ph.D. in 1998 from the University of Minnesota. She has taught at the Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio, and in 2002 began teaching at Duke University, where she is associate professor in the Program in Literature and in the Women's Studies Program. Mottahedeh curated the "Reel Evil: Films from the Axis of Evil” film festival with Miriam Cooke in 2003 and created Brainquake with Golbarg Bashi in response to Boobquake on April 26, 2010.
Barbara Dickinson | Faculty
Barbara Dickinson, Professor Emerita of the Practice of Dance at Duke University, served as Dance Program Director for eighteen years, overseeing faculty growth, guiding the focus of a greatly expanded curriculum and establishing a major. She has created many full-length collaborative works including Walking Miracles, based on the stories of survivors of child sexual abuse. Artistic Director of the Ways and Means Dance Company (1986-2002), and of Three For All (1981-87), she has performed, taught and choreographed in schools, colleges, private studios and dance festivals throughout the United States. She continues to search for new ways to move and create.
Purnima Shah | Faculty
Purnima Shah is an Associate Professor of the Practice in the Duke Dance Program and a performer in the Kathak and Bharatanatyam dances of India. Under her directorship, the Master of Fine Arts in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis was proposed, approved and established in Fall 2019 at Duke University. She has produced, directed and scripted a dance documentary, Dancing with the Goddess. A new book project focusing on Garba Dancing: from Ritual to Disco is in progress. She has published scholarly articles in peer reviewed journals besides chapters in anthologies. She acquired her Ph.D. in Performance Studies and Ethnography (with a focus on Asian Performance) from the Department of Theatre and Drama, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
David Malone | Faculty
In fall 2020, David Malone began his 37th year as Professor of the Practice of Education and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Program in Education at Duke University. Professor Malone is active in the life of the School of Arts and Sciences at Duke University. For many years, he chaired the Arts and Sciences Curriculum Committee, the Assessment Committee, and has served in numerous faculty governance positions. In the late 1980s, in close collaboration with faculty colleagues, teachers in the Durham Public Schools, and local neighborhood community leaders, Professor Malone developed a service-learning program that annually matches approximately five-hundred Duke students as mentors to children and youth. This program has evolved over time into a University-wide service-learning program that supports more than 80 community-based academic courses across 30 academic departments. Professor Malone currently serves as the Faculty Director of the Duke Service Learning Program. His scholarly interests focus on holistic student development both at the PK-12 level and within higher education. He is particularly interested in the transformative learning that often results from non-traditional experiential pedagogies. Professor Malone is currently working with colleagues across the Duke campus to re-imagine undergraduate education in ways that give greater focus to the development of desired student learning outcomes such as creativity, empathy, humility, perspective-taking, social equity, racial justice, personal meaning, civic responsibility, and the discovery of moral purpose.
Glenna Batson | Faculty
For five decades, Glenna Batson has honed a trans-disciplinary approach to the study of embodiment. Engaged at the intersection of dance, human movement science and Somatics, Glenna sources from multiple disciplines as catalysts for teaching, research, advocacy, and artistic and personal growth. Glenna holds a master’s degree (MA) in dance education (1978), and a master’s and doctorate in physical therapy (1983/2006). Glenna was pivotal in the establishment of IADMS (International Association of Dance Medicine and Science) in the early 1980s, expanding the scope of integrative medicine to include the somatic arts and dance. Glenna was faculty of the American Dance Festival for 29 years. She recently completed her term as a Fulbright Senior Specialist in dance, with residencies in Estonia, Bath Spa and London. She is author of Body and Mind in Motion: Dance and Neuroscience in Conversation, and co-editor/contributor to Dance, Somatics and Spiritualities: Contemporary Sacred Narratives, both published in 2014 (University of Chicago Press). Community service includes co-directing CURE-NC, the state chapter for CURE Nationa, a grassroots organization dedicated to criminal justice through advocacy to end mass incarceration and life sentences.
Cory Tamler | Graduate Student
Cory Tamler:
Cory Tamler (www.corytamler.com) is a writer, translator, and interdisciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in theatre, performance as research, and community organizing. A core artist with Open Waters in Wabanaki/Maine, she currently co-facilitates/creates work with the Penobscot River watershed and In Kinship Fellowship. She is a PhD candidate at The Graduate Center, CUNY, where her dissertation is concerned with the ways arts and sciences emerge from, and dynamically impact on, the same material conditions that shape the thoughts that human beings are capable of thinking. Her research draws together histories and philosophies of modern physics and concurrent theatrical and performance movements in Germany and the USA from the twentieth century to our own times.
Leo Ryan | Graduate Student
Leo Ryan is an interdisciplinary movement artist originally from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. As a non-binary trans artist, much of their work is autoethnographic and reflects their own lived experience of growing up queer in the Deep South and as a queer Southern transplant throughout the continental United States. Presently, they are most interested in exploring notions of transcorporealities and queer exhaustion, duration, effort, and pleasure. Leo works in forms of movement that that include live dance, performance art, and dance on film. They also create site-specific work situated in Appalachian and Deep Southern landscapes. From 2016-2021, Leo lived in Portland, Oregon as a working dance artist and dance educator. In 2021, they relocated to Durham, North Carolina, to study for the Master of Fine Arts in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis at Duke University.
Ife Presswood | Graduate Student
Ife Michelle Presswood is a choreographer, dancer, Black culture educator, and artistic spacemaker whose artistic work strives to reclaim the identity and demonstrate the multiplicity of the Black Women/Black Womanhood through movement (Ife Michelle Dance) in response to the reality of misogynoir. A community-based teaching artist Ife offers classes, workshops, and training in Black Cultural styles/techniques and choreography as a means of exploring and coming towards self (The NightCap), as well as curating Black community-based movement workshops that vivify Black movement artists and embodied epistemology. Additionally, Ife engages in interdisciplinary work in the arts as a creative director for local vocal artists, offering performance training, stage choreography, and music video conceptualization/choreography. Ife is also a higher-ed Professor (Duke University/Fayetteville State/North Carolina State University) where she teaches Black/Queer Cultural dance styles through a history and practicum.
Courtney Crumpler | Graduate Student
Courtney Crumpler is a movement artist, organizer, researcher, and translator working between Brazil and the United States. She investigates the roles of embodied knowledge and experience in political protest, organizing, and education. A graduate of the inaugural cohort of Duke’s MFA in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis, Courtney teaches in the Program in Dance and is pursuing a PhD in Romance Studies (Portuguese and Spanish track). She is a co-coordinator of the Black Lives Matter Brazil-USA exhibit project, a member leader with Durham for All, a founding member of the Gigantes Na Luta feminist performance collective and has performed, on stilts, in five Rio de Janeiro carnivals.
Marika Niko | Graduate Student
Marika Niko is a choreographer, thinker, and crocheter originally from Japan. After being a nomad for most of her life ‒ Thailand, UK, the Netherlands, UAE, Japan ‒ Marika is currently based in the US. After graduating from New York University Abu Dhabi with a BA in Theater, she is currently pursuing her MFA in Dance at Duke University. She researches alternative modes of social organization by drawing upon two movement disciplines: butoh and social choreography. As part of her thesis, she curates Meshroom, a performance environment, along with collaborator, Leo Ryan.
Lee Edwards | Graduate Student
Lee Edwards is an interdisciplinary movement artist and embodied storyteller, working in dance, sound, video, and ethnography. Their layered corporeality shapes the lens through which they investigate, create, and express their experiences. They are a Black Queer Millennial person, a glitched body (as coined by Legacy Russell) navigating multiple realities, living underneath and within systems that oppress and shape their body and self. As a navigator Lee offers reflections on society, time, and place in its present. Lee’s practice takes shape through the use of performance, installation, improvisational and somatic techniques, and writing. Their work allows them to make sense of the present by examining it alongside the past in the hopes of creating otherwise possibilities in our nearest future. Lee recently received their MFA in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis and Master's Certificate in African and African American Studies from Duke University (2022), and is currently based in Durham, NC.
Zhixuan Zhu (Miki) | Graduate Student
Zhixuan Zhu (Miki) was born in China in 1999. She lived in China for the first two decades and is currently studying in the United States. Miki is an artist, movement explorer, spiritual researcher, and Buddhist devotee. She was born in a traditional Buddhist family, which made her fascinated by the occult from an early age. Her dance work is also associated with it. One of her dance pieces, "Simulated summoning," presented the process of permitting an Evil Serpent God to enter her body. Despite the potential pitfalls of these creations, she was still drawn to dark, borderline spiritual dance. In 2021, she graduated from Beijing Normal University with a BFA in Dance (minor: Literature). Currently, she is a second-year student in the Master of Fine Arts in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis at Duke University. Because she found that dance practice has largely subdued the essential aspects of spirituality in embodied performance practice, this has led to her research interest in repairing the natural connection between dance and spirituality. She also hopes that dance can be an effective and direct way for people to heal from the trauma inside. Ultimately, her wish is for world peace and for people to love dance forever.
Brooks Emanuel | Kenan Fellow in Social Choreography
Brooks Emanuel, an Atlanta native, is in the MFA program in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis and the 2022-2023 Graduate Arts Fellow in Social Choreography & Performance. After dancing and choreographing for a decade in New York and Atlanta, he shifted to progressive policy work, including serving as Director of Legislative Services for the Georgia House Democratic Caucus under Leader Stacey Abrams. He then attended NYU School of Law, where he interned with NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, ACLU Capital Punishment Project, and NYCLU. Upon obtaining his J.D., he worked at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, representing people on death row, people sentenced to life without parole, and those suffering horrific prison conditions. His MFA research focuses on combining dance and racial justice work.