Valk :Klien Workshop - HfMDK Frankfurt

KIT (Körper in Theater) Lecture Series presents:
What Do We Choreograph
at the End of the World ?
Social Thinking / Social Dreaming / Social Choreography
WORKSHOP
WITH DRAMATURGE STEVE VALK
AND CHOREOGRAPHER MICHAEL KLIEN
18 - 20 Mai 2012
Fr. 17:00 - 20:00
Sa. 11:00 - 17:00
So. 10:30 - 15:00
„It would be a very beautiful and judicious definition
of dance to say that it is a new name given to the earth.“
Alain Badiou: The Handbook of Inaesthetics
CONTEMPORARY DANCE DRAMATURGE STEVE VALK AND CHOREOGRAPHER MICHAEL KLIEN INTRODUCE THE EMERGING
FIELD OF SOCIAL CHOREOGRAPHY AS A REAL-WORLD PROJECT OF TRANSFORMATIVE AESTHETIC PRACTICE.
Out of a growing awareness of the ever-widening gap between “the way man thinks and the way nature works,” choreography, traditionally
understood as “the art of movement in time and space”, has found itself being drawn away from “the ideal world”
of the stage. At the same time it has been driven to undergo a re-examination of its conceptual language and explanatory systems.
Choreography has moved beyond the architecture of its stationary historical universe and has emerged as an embodied act of a human
consciousness no longer separate from, but embedded within, the irreducible, unfathomably complex ordering system of the biological
world.
PRODUCING ANOTHER WORLD
The experimental workshop format developed by Steve Valk and Michael Klien opens up a new kind of thinking space, focusing its
theoretical, practical and performative energies toward exploring new modes of inhabiting social structures and cultural forms through the
primacy of bodily existence, outlining a vision of dance that no longer understands itself as an art, but as a constituting
principle, a "technology of the self" at the edges of modern consciousness.
The workshop includes audio-visual demonstrations, an examination of selected texts, open discussion as well as
the potential for participants to engage physically with the ideas brought forth.

Steve Valk (1962) is a contemporary dance dramaturge, visual artist and designer and a leading figure in the emerging
field of Social Choreography. In 2007 he founded the international dramaturgical and social choreographic design
agency „r.i.c.e.“ (radical institute of cybernetic epistemology) in Frankfurt Germany. For twelve years (1992-2004),
he was Head Dramaturge and creative collaborator for William Forsythe and Ballett Frankfurt. During this period,
his ground-breaking visual dramaturgy informed Forsythe`s seminal choreographic works. From 1998 to 2004,
Valk`s dramaturgical practice and focus on trans-disciplinary networking strategies lead to the development of
a new participatory / situational epistemology for the institution of contemporary dance. The resulting large-scale
projects "Schmalclub" (1999-2002) and "New Meaningful Public Space" (2003-2004) are now recognized as seminal
works in the emerging field of Social Choreography. From 2004-2011, Valk, in partnership with choreographer and
Artistic Director Michael Klien, became Head Dramaturge and artistic collaborator of Ireland`s Daghdha Dance
Company. Through a persistent process of rigorously re-examing the core principles of contemporary cultural practice,
Daghdha became one of Europe‘s most progressive arts organizations, “a complex and living ecology, one which
conceptually transcended and extended far beyond the boundaries of its formally prescribed institutional structures”.
Michael Kliën (1973) is an acclaimed choreographer, curator and producer of numerous touring productions, installations,
exhibitions and events. His work has been situated across the world. Influenced by previous fine-art studies, he cofounded
the London-based performance collectiv Barriedale Operahouse¹ in 1994 (in operation till 2000). From 2003 to
2011 he was Artistic Director/CEO of Daghdha Dance Company, one of Ireland's premiere dance organisations.
His work is concerned with the theoretical and practical development of choreography for which he has been awarded a
PhD from Edinburgh College of Art in 2009. Recipient of various awards and commissions including Ballett Frankfurt, Irish
Museum of Modern Art, ZKM, TQW and the Vienna Volksoper.