Michael Kliën
Rafal Kosakowski developed an identity for Michael Kliën, a leading voice in contemporary choreography. Michael’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.
Since his early 20s Michael Kliën has been engaged in fundamentally deconstructing our civilization’s assumptions on choreography, dance and culture. He set out to develop choreography as an autonomous artistic discipline concerned with the workings and governance of patterns, dynamics and ecologies. In response to the urgency of our contemporary ecological situation, this expanded conception of choreography engages its social potential to pursue sustainable orders of human relations (Social Choreography). Choreography—as an Aesthetics of Change—assumes the creative practice of setting relations, or setting the conditions for new relations to emerge.
“Michael Kliën is one of the most innovative choreographers working in the U.S. today. What is radical about Kliën is the way he asks dancers and audience members to participate in movement together.”
—Frank Hentschker, Executive Director and Director of Programs, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
