Meg Stuart

Meg Stuart is an American choreographer and dancer, born in New Orleans, living and working in Berlin and Brussels. In 1983, she moved to New York to study dance at New York University. She continued her training at Movement Research, where she explored various Release techniques and was active in the New York dance scene.

Invited in 1991 to perform at the Klapstuk Festival in Leuven, she created her first evening-length work, Disfigure Study, which launched her artistic career in Europe. In this choreography, Stuart approached the body as a vulnerable physical entity that, even when deconstructed, distorted, or manipulated, always finds resonance and meaning. Wanting to establish her own structure for developing artistic projects, Stuart founded Damaged Goods in Brussels in 1994. Since then, Meg Stuart and Damaged Goods have created more than thirty productions—ranging from solos such as XXX for Arlene and Colleagues (1995), Soft Wear (2000), and Hunter (2014), to larger-scale works such as Visitors Only (2003), Built to Last (2012), and UNTIL OUR HEARTS STOP (2015). The company explores multiple artistic forms, including video, installation, and site-specific creations such as Projecting [Space[ at the Ruhrtriennale 2017.

She has initiated several improvisation projects, including Crash Landing and Auf den Tisch!. In collaboration with a group of local female artists, Stuart presented City Lights – a continuous gathering in 2016 at HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin).

Stuart strives to develop a new language for each work in collaboration with artists from different creative disciplines, including visual artists Gary Hill and Ann Hamilton, and composers Hahn Rowe and Brendan Dougherty. The use of theatrical techniques and the dialogue between movement and narration are recurring themes in her choreographies. Her choreographic work revolves around the concept of a body immersed in uncertainty, vulnerable, and oriented toward introspection. Through improvisation, Stuart probes physical and emotional states, or their memory. Her artistic work evokes an ever-changing identity; it constantly redefines itself while seeking new contexts and territories in which to present dance.

Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods maintains long-term collaborations with Kaaitheater in Brussels and HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin.