Michael Kliën

Choreographer and artist Michael Kliën’s work has been situated around the world. Widely considered one of Europe’s foremost thinkers in the field of contemporary choreography today, he has been commissioned by leading institutions such as the Athens Epidaurus Festival, Ballett Frankfurt, Martha Graham Dance Company, New Museum, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Benaki Museum and Hayward Gallery.

As Artistic Director/CEO of Daghdha (2003-2011, Ireland) and co-founder of R.I.C.E. on the Greek island of Hydra, he and his collaborators developed notions of an extended, sociopolitically engaged choreography often referred to as “Social Choreography”. Kliën’s artistic practice encompasses interdisciplinary thinking, critical writing, curatorial projects, and, centrally, choreographic works equally at home in the Performing as well as the Fine Arts. He was awarded a PhD from Edinburgh College of Art in 2009, and, in 2017, Kliën was appointed Professor at Duke University. He was the inaugural director of the MFA in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis and has founded and directed the Laboratory for Social Choreography at the Kenan Institute of Ethics at Duke since 2021.

Michael Kliën is an Onassis AiR Fellow for 2024/25 through the Dramaturgy Fellowship.