ELKE LUYTEN, originally from Belgium, currently lives and works in New York. She identifies as a queer outsider artist and navigates through the fields of experimental theatre, conceptual dance, performance art, installation and video.

She has a foundational mastery of Corporeal Mime, a codified French movement technique which impels her to question and reinvent traditional choreographic structures with a critical perspective and a socio-political awareness.

In addition to her own creative work, she often works and performs for other artists. In 2010, Luyten 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, she choreographed David Bowie’s short film Blackstar. Additionally, Luyten performed in Blackstar and again in Bowie’s final music video, Lazarus.

She 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 2021, she worked with director Johan Renck and Adam Sandler on Spaceman, a Netflix film.

She specializes 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 hyperstylized quotidian movement.

MOST RECENTLY, she created a language of movement for the HBO Max pilot of the series Dune: The Sisterhood. Her most recent performance was at the Royal Academy in London where she performed Marina Abramović's piece called The House with the Ocean View. An installation piece performed continuously for 24 hours for 12 days, with no food, no talking and no reading.

Today she continues to create new performance work. She is developing a series of live performances in rivers across the globe. This series called Half-Life will premiere in the Hudson River just north of New York City in 2024.