Meg Stuart - Biography

Biography

Meg Stuart (U.S.A.) is a choreographer and dancer living and working in Brussels and Berlin. In 1986 she received her BFA in dance at New York University and continued her training following classes in Release technique and Contact Improvisation at the dance laboratory Movement Research (New York). In the 1980s Stuart worked as a dancer with Nina Martin, Lisa Kraus, Federico Restrepo and Marcus Stern, and from 1986 to 1992 she was a member of the Randy Warshaw Dance Company, where she was also assistant to the choreographer.

On the invitation of the Klapstuk festival in Leuven, she created her first evening-length piece Disfigure Study, which launched her choreographic career in Europe. Stuart founded her own company Damaged Goods in 1994 and made Brussels her artistic home. She collaborated with many artists, including Pierre Coulibeuf, Philipp Gehmacher, Ann Hamilton, Gary Hill, Benoît Lachambre, Jorge León and Hahn Rowe. Residencies in Schauspielhaus Zürich (2000–04) and Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz Berlin (2005–10) led to collaborations with theatre directors Stefan Pucher, Christoph Marthaler and Frank Castorf. Since 2010 Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods initiated a new collaboration with the Münchner Kammerspiele where next year’s production will premiere at the end of April 2012.

With Damaged Goods, Stuart has created more than twenty productions, ranging from solos to large-scale choreographies and including site-specific creations and installations. Over the years she has initiated and taken part in several improvisation projects. She curated the festival Intimate Strangers (Berlin 2006, Brussels 2008, Toulouse 2011 and Ghent 2011) with performances, concerts, installations and lectures by artists related to Damaged Goods. Her work has travelled a wide international theatre circuit and has also been presented at Documenta X (1997) in Kassel and at Manifesta7 (2008) in Bolzano. Stuart also teaches workshops in a variety of contexts.

Meg Stuart received the Mobil Pegasus Award at the Sommertheaterfestival in Hamburg (1994) for No Longer Readymade; the Culture Award of the Catholic University of Leuven (2000); the German theatre prize Der Faust (2006) for her choreography of Replacement; the French Prize of Criticism (2008) for Blessed; a special prize for Maybe Forever at the Bitef Festival in Belgrade (2008); a Bessie Award in New York (2008) for her body of work; a Flemish Culture Award in the category performing arts (2008); the Konrad-Wolf-Preis for exceptional accomplishments in the arts (2012).