Born in New Orleans, Meg Stuart is an American choreographer and dancer who lives and works in Berlin and Brussels. The daughter of theatre directors, she began dancing and acting at an early age in California and regularly performed in her parents’ productions and those made by family friends. She made her first dance studies as a teenager focussing on simple movement actions. Stuart decided to move to New York in 1983 and studied dance at New York University. She continued her training at Movement Research where she explored numerous release techniques and was actively involved in the downtown New York dance scene. Invited to perform at the Klapstuk festival in Leuven (1991), she created her first evening-length piece, Disfigure Study, which launched her artistic career in Europe. In this choreography, Stuart approached the body as a vulnerable physical entity that can be deconstructed, distorted or displaced but still resonates and has meaning. Interested in devising her own structure through which to develop artistic projects, Stuart founded Damaged Goods in Brussels in 1994. Damaged Goods is a flexible, open structure that facilitates the production of highly diverse projects and interdisciplinary collaborations. Meg Stuart and Damaged Goods have worked on over thirty productions, ranging from solos to large-scale choreographies and including site-specific creations, installations and improvisation projects.
Stuart strives to develop a new language for every piece in collaboration with artists from different creative disciplines and navigates the tension between dance and theatre. The use of theatrical devices, in addition to the dialogue between movement and narrative, are recurrent themes in her choreographies. Stuart’s choreographic work revolves around the idea of an uncertain body, one that is vulnerable and self-reflexive. Through improvisation, Stuart explores physical and emotional states or the memories of them. Her artistic work is analogous to a constantly shifting identity. It constantly redefines itself while searching for new presentation contexts and territories for dance.
At the invitation of intendant Johan Simons, Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods became associate artists at the Münchner Kammerspiele in 2010. Damaged Goods also has an on-going collaboration with the Kaaitheater (Brussels) and the HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin). In 2014, Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods is touring BLESSED (2007), VIOLET (2011), Built to Last (2012), Sketches/Notebook (2013) and Hunter (2014).
The Only Possible City (Video)
Galerie Patrick Ebensperger, 28. – 31. August, 12 am – 6 pm
27. August, 7:30 pm Vernissage