Meg Stuart

Meg Stuart (born 1965) is an American choreographer and dancer who lives and works in Brussels and Berlin. Her company, Damaged Goods, has operated from Brussels since 1994.

Start as a dancer and choreographer

Stuart was born in New Orleans in 1965. She moved to New York City in 1983 where she studied at New York University. She continued her studies at Movement Research (New York) where she studied several release techniques and was active in the Downtown New York dance scene. In the eighties she worked as a dancer for Nina Martin, Lisa Kraus, Federico Restrepo and Marcus Stern. For five years (1986–1992) she was part of the Randy Warshaw Dance Company. On the invitation of the Klapstuk festival in Leuven (BE) in 1991 she created Disfigure Study, her first evening-length performance, which launched her career in Europe. In Disfigure Study, Meg Stuart approaches the body as a vulnerable physical entity, one that can be deformed, deconstructed, and displaced but still resonates with meaning.

Damaged Goods

Interested in devising her own structure, Stuart founded Damaged Goods in Brussels in 1994. Damaged Goods is an open and flexible structure, which makes the production of highly diverse projects and interdisciplinary collaborations possible. Together they have worked on a broad range of projects, ranging from solos such as XXX for Arlene and Colleagues (1995), Soft Wear (2000) and the evening-length solo Hunter (2014) to large-scale choreographies such as Visitors Only (2003), Built to Last (2012) and UNTIL OUR HEARTS STOP (2015). Other projects include video works, installations and site-specific creations. Her work has travelled the international theatre circuit and has also been presented at Documenta X in Kassel (1997), at Manifesta7 in Bolzano (2008) and at PERFORMA09 in New York.

Damaged Goods has an ongoing collaboration with Kaaitheater (Brussels) and HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin). Before they also worked together with Schauspielhaus Zürich (2000–2004), Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz Berlin (2005–2010), Münchner Kammerspiele (2010–2015) and Ruhrtriennale (2015–2017) That same year the German magazine crowned her choreographer of the year for her productions Sketches/Notebook and Hunter.

In 2018, The Venice Biennale awarded Meg Stuart the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in the category of dance. She receives the prize for her constant developing of new languages and methods for each new creation, in which she keeps on redefining new contexts and territories for dance. Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods also received the Deutscher Tanzpreis Award for outstanding performer from Dachverband Tanz Deutschland that year.

Choreographies/collaborations

Disfigure Study, 1991 No Longer Readymade, 1993 Swallow my yellow smile, 1994 XXX for Arlene and Colleagues, 1995 No One is Watching, 1995 Inside Skin #1 They live in Our Breath, 1996 Splayed Mind Out, 1997 Remote, 1997 appetite, 1999 Comeback, 1999 Snapshots, 1999 I'm all yours, 2000 Private Room, 2000 sand table, 2000 Soft Wear, 2000 Highway 101, 2000/2001 Alibi, 2001 Henry IV, 2002 Das goldene Zeitalter, 2003 Visitors Only, 2003 Forgeries, Love and Other Matters, 2004 Der Marterphahl, 2005 REPLACEMENT, 2006 It's not funny!, 2006 Blessed, 2007 Maybe Forever, 2007 All Together Now, 2008 Die Massnahme/Mauser, 2008 Do Animals Cry, 2009 the fault lines, 2010 Signs of Affection, 2010 Off Course, 2010 Atelier, 2011 VIOLET, 2011 Built to Last, 2012 Sketches/Notebook, 2013 An evening of solo works, 2013 Hunter, 2014 UNTIL OUR HEARTS STOP, 2015 Inflamável, 2016 Shown and Told, 2016 Atelier III, 2017 Projecting [Space[, 2017 Celestial Sorrow, 2018

Improvisations

Crash Landing, 1996–1999 Auf den Tisch!, 2005–2011 Politics of Ecstasy, 2009 Atelier II, 2012 City Lights – a continuous gathering, 2016

Projects

Running, 1992 This is the Show and the Show is Many Things, 1994 Revisited, 2007 walk+talk #2, 2008 Intimate Strangers, Brussels, 2008 walk+talk #16, 2011 Intimate Strangers, Ghent, 2011

Video works

Smell the flowers while you can (Johan Grimonprez, 1994–2012, 6 min) Meg Stuart’s Alibi (Maarten Vanden Abeele, 2001, 24 min) the invited (Jonathan Inksetter, 2003, 12 min) Somewhere in between (Pierre Coulibeuf, 2004, 67 min) The Only Possible City (Meg Stuart, 2008) I thought I'd never say this (Philipp Hochleichter, 2008, video-installatie) Inflamável (Meg Stuart, 2016, 16 min)

Collaborations

Various projects by Meg Stuart were created in collaboration with dancers and performers, amongst others:

Florence Augendre Simone Aughterlony Heine Avdal Alexander Baczynski-Jenkins Milli Bitterli Francisco Camacho Varinia Canto Vila Thomas Conway Ugo Dehaes Jorge Rodolfo de Hoyos Mor Demer Christine De Smedt Joséphine Evrard Davis Freeman Eric Grondin David Hernandez Abraham Hurtado Márcio Kerber Canabarro Adam Linder Antonija Livingstone Benoît Lachambre Anna MacRae Roberto Martínez Renan Martins de Oliveira Andreas Müller Anja Müller Kotomi Nishiwaki Rachid Ouramdane Sonja Pregrad Vânia Rovisco Roger Sala Reyner Maria F. Scaroni Yukiko Shinozaki Mariana Tengner Barros Kristof Van Boven Frank James Willens Thomas Wodianka Sigal Zouk

Other artists that operated as co-creator were a.o.

Gary Hill (Splayed Mind Out) Ann Hamilton (Appetite) Magali Desbazeille (Sand Table) Jorge Léon (I’m all yours) Philipp Gehmacher (Maybe Forever) Tim Etchells (Shown and told)

Dramaturges that often collaborated on projects by Meg Stuart are a.o.: André Lepecki Bettina Masuch Jeroen Peeters Bart Van den Eynde Myriam Van Imschoot

For music and sound design, Meg Stuart often collaborates with: Bart Aga Brendan Dougherty Paul Lemp Vincent Malstaf Hahn Rowe

Textual contributions for various productions were produced by Tim Etchells. Video, film and other visuals were created by amongst others

Chris Kondek Jorge León Vladimir Miller

Costumes were created by a.o.:

Nathalie Douxfils Sofie Durnez Nadine Grellinger Nina Gundlach Claudia Hill Tina Kloempken Jean-Paul Lespagnard Dorothee Loermann

Light design was created by Amongst others:

Sandra Blatterer Marc Dewit Åsa Frankenberg Michael Hulls Jan Maertens

Set designs were created by a.o.:

Janina Audick Doris Dziersk Anna Viebrock Jozef Wouters