Elke Luyten

This is a workshop where we will dissect our own artistic practice and question what we need as artists right now. We will confront our own being and interest in making art. How can we find seeds of artistic expression within ourselves and how can we nurture those seeds?

Through physically demanding exercises from Performance Art and Physical Theatre we will explore long durational practises and codified movement language. We enable the performer to become more autonomous in creating metaphor-based physical art pieces. Throughout the workshop, we will play with and transform the energy within our bodies, learning how different types of energy can influence the way we express ourselves artistically.

ELKE LUYTEN (b. 1974, Belgium) founded Zus Performance in 2003 with Kira Alker (b. 1979, USA). They both have a foundational mastery of Corporeal Mime (via Thomas Leabhart), a French codified theatre technique based upon placing geometry and resistance in the body; following a kind of unified field theory, physical forces in the body then translate into the metaphysical. From this understanding of highly systematized movement, they navigate through the fields of experimental theatre, conceptual dance, performance art, installation and video, often working transdisciplinarily and in collaboration with others. The main focus of their work is creative transgressive metaphor, exploring the roles of perception, consciousness, ethics and aesthetics. Through Kira’s masters at the Performance Study program at NYU they were able to situate their work within a large critical artistic context.

Their work has been showcased internationally at such venues as the REDCAT in Los Angeles, the NOTAFE International Dance Festival in Estonia and Honen-in Temple in Japan. In New York, they have presented work at Movement Research at the Judson Church, AUNTS, Danspace Project and Dance and Process at The Kitchen. Their work has been supported through residencies from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Dance New Amsterdam, the Watermill Center, Stiftung Insel Hombroich, and the Newburgh Community Land Bank. In 2019-2020, they took up residency in the psychiatric department of Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn where they lived and participated in the partially hospitalized program, developing and teaching their technique of formlessness to the psychiatric patients.

In addition to their own creative work, Elke often works and performs for other artists. In 2010, Elke re-performed in several pieces at the exhibition Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present at the MoMA in New York City. She also performed in Robert Wilson’s The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, which toured internationally from 2011-2013.

In 2015, Elke and Kira choreographed David Bowie’s short film Blackstar. Additionally, Elke performed in Blackstar and again in Bowie’s final music video, Lazarus. Zus created the choreography for Sibyl Kempson’s theatrical works at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City in 2017 and 2018.

In 2023 she performed Marina Abramović ’s The House with the Ocean View at the Royal Academy of the Arts in London, UK. During this performance she fasted for 12 days and was not allowed to speak, write or leave the exhibition space.

Today Zus continues to create new performance work. They are developing a series of live performances in rivers across the globe. This series is called Half-Life. They have started another new series called Living Room Dances. The first performance happened at 160 Dubois Street in Newburgh in December 2024.

Additionally, they specialize in choreography and movement coaching, lending expertise in the creation and portrayal of ritual, horror, abjection, religiosity and the supernatural, as well as the study and execution of hyperstylization of quotidian movement. Most recently, they created a language of movement for the HBO Max pilot of the series Dune: The Sisterhood.

Zus is also working on a new multimedia digital book called Dinosaurs, presenting a series of interviews of several masters across the fields of –and at the intersection of – performing arts and religion. The conversations investigate: within the radical landscape of evolving technology and globalization, what legacy do these deep, spiritual and embodied practices bear for future generations?