Dr Melanie Kloetzel
Positions
Professor, Dance
Division Lead - Dance
University of Calgary
Contact information
Phone number
Office: +1 (403) 220-6565
Background
Educational Background
B.A. History, Swarthmore College, 1993
M.A. History, University of Montana, 2002
M.F.A. Fine Art, University of California, Riverside, 2004
Ph.D. Dance Studies, University of Roehampton, 2018
Biography
I am a settler choreographer, performer, scholar, and educator based in Moh’kinsstis on the traditional Treaty 7 lands of the Blackfoot Confederacy. I have been the artistic director of kloetzel&co. for over two decades, as well as co-artistic director of the art intervention collective TRAction. Employing practice-as-research methodologies, I have developed events, workshops, films and encounters in theatre spaces, alternative venues, spaces of public assembly, and online environments across four continents. My place-based creations have appeared in spaces as varied as a defunct rail station, a busy urban deli, a corporate skyway system, and an abandoned egg farm, as well as in more conventional sites such as Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church (NYC), Movement Research at the Judson Church (NYC), On the Boards (Seattle), Dusk Dances (Toronto), and the Painted Bride Art Center (Philadelphia). Films by my company have garnered such awards as Best of Fest, Best Documentary, Best Cast and Best Experimental Film from international film festivals, and I have been fortunate to have my practice-based research for stage, site and screen supported by grants from Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Calgary Arts Development, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, among others.
I have published reflections/analysis of my practice-based research creation in edited anthologies and peer reviewed journals such as Dance Research Journal, Contemporary Theatre Review, Choreographic Practices, Performance Research and New Theatre Quarterly, among others. My anthology, co-edited with Carolyn Pavlik, Site Dance: Choreographers and the Lure of Alternative Spaces was nominated for the de la Torre Bueno Prize® and the CORD Outstanding Publication Award and is currently available in hard cover, paperback, and as an eBook from the University Press of Florida. Other books include the recently released co-authored volumes, (Re)Positioning Site Dance: Local Acts, Global Perspectives, available through Intellect Press and Covert: A Handbook, available through Triarchy Press.
Before coming to University of Calgary, I was the Director of the Dance program at Idaho State University from 2004-2007. I have performed nationally and internationally with such artists as Ann Carlson, Kim David Arrow, and the Leah Stein Dance Company, and was a member of Race Dance under the direction of Lisa Race from 1995-2000.
Research
Areas of Research
Courses
| Course number | Course title | Semester |
|---|---|---|
| DNCE 303 LAB 01 B01 | Principles of Technique | 2008, 2009, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2020 |
| DNCE 305 LAB 01 B01 | Elem Contemporary Dance III | 2008, 2009, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2020 |
| DNCE 305 SEC 01 S01 | Elem Contemporary Dance III | 2008, 2009, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2020 |
| DNCE 481 LEC 01 01 | Theorizing Dancing Bodies | 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022 |
| DNCE 57193 SEC 01 S01 | Directed Studies | 2020, 2024 |
| DNCE 58102 LAB 01 B01 | Adv Topic Dance Practices: Site-Specific Dance | 2015, 2018, 2020 |
| DNCE 58102 SEC 01 S01 | Adv Topic Dance Practices: Site-Specific Dance | 2015, 2018, 2020 |
| DNCE 303 SEC 01 S01 | Principles of Technique | 2008, 2009, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2020 |
| DNCE 433 | Creative Process IV | 2019, 2020, 2023, 2024 |
| DNCE 307 | Intermediate Contemporary Dance I | 2023, 2025 |
| DNCE 395 | Dance Performance Practicum | 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2024 |
Awards
- Student Union Teaching Excellence Award - Honourable Mention, Student Union Teaching Excellence Awards Committee . 2018
- Nomination for Top 40 under 40 for Calgary's Avenue Magazine, 2009
- Student Union Teaching Excellence Award - Nomination, Student Union Teaching Excellence Awards Committee.
- Best Documentary Film, Mabig Film Festival. 2021
- Boss Female Short Award, Freedom Festival International. 2021
- Best Experimental Film Award, GO Independent FIlm Festival. 2021
- Best Cast Award - Alternative Film Festival, Alternative Film Festival (Toronto). 2019
- Creativity Award, A Show for a Change Festival.
- Best of Fest, Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema. 2007
- Best Short Documentary, DC After Dark Film Festival. 2022
- Honourable Mention, Costume Design, Exeter Dance International Film Festival. 2023
Publications
- Playing Politics: Versatile Operations in Site- Adaptive Performance. Melanie Kloetzel. Contemporary Theatre Review - Interventions. (2019)
- Perfroming Versatility in a Neoliberal Age: Site-Adaptive Performance. Melanie Kloetzel. Contemporary Theatre Review. (2019)
- Site Dance as Activist Methodology: Creating performance/protest in sites of assembly’. Melanie Kloetzel. Choreographic Practices: Dancing Urbanisms. (2019)
- Choreographic Practices: Dancing Urbanisms special issue. Melanie Kloetzel, Victoria Hunter, Karen Barbour. Choreographic Practices. (2019)
- Site Adapt Perform: A Practice-as-Research Confrontation with Climate Change. Melanie Kloetzel. Dance Research. (2017)
- Site and Re-Site: Early Efforts to Serialize Site Dance. Melanie Kloetzel. Dance Research Journal. (2017)
- Bodies in place: location as collaborator in dance film. Melanie Kloetzel. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media . (2015)
- Dance Education, Decolonization, and the Climate Crisis: Developing ethical pedagogies. Journal of Dance Education. (2023)
- New Directions in Site Performance Practice: Acknowledging Climate Coloniality in Practice-Based Research. Performance Matters. (2023)
- Danse in situ et éthique environnementale : des champs relationnels à l’ère de l’Anthropocène. Recherche en Danse. (2023)
- Decolonizing Site-Specific Performance Methodologies: Preliminary Steps’. 187-210. Contemporary Theatre Review . (2024)
- Ecological Performance and “Settler Creep”: Making Space to Resist Invasion. Performance Research. 36-45. (2024)
- From recontextualization to protest: 50 years of site dance practice in North America. Melanie J Kloetzel. Intellect. 25-49. (2019)
- Lend me an ear: Dialogism and the vocalizing site. Melanie J Kloetzel. Intellect. 157-81. (2019)
- Site-specific dance and environmental ethics: Relational fields in the Anthropocene. Melanie J Kloetzel. Intellect. 217-45. (2019)
- COVERT: A Handbook - 30 Movement Meditations for Resisting Invasion. Melanie Kloetzel and Phil Smith. Triarchy Press. (2021)
- (Re)Positioning Site Dance Local Acts, Global Perspectives. Melanie Kloetzel, Karen Barbour, Victoria Hunter. Intellect Press. (2019)
- Site Dance: Choreographers and the Lure of Alternative Spaces. Melanie Kloetzel and Carolyn Pavlik, co-editors. University Press of Florida. (2009)
- Location, Location, Location: Dance Film and Site-Specific Dance. Melanie Kloetzel, with book edited by Telory Arendell and Ruth Barnes. Palgrave MacMillan. (2016)
- Site-Specific Dance in a Corporate Landscape: Space, Place, and Non-Place . Melanie Kloetzel, with book edited by Victoria Hunter. Routledge. (2015)
- Site Performance, Coloniality and the Climate Crisis. Routledge Companion to Site-Specific Performance. (2025)
In the News
- Artists organize to offer new visions for tackling climate change. The Conversation Canada. (2022)
- Climate muse: Eco-artists hope to inspire in the face of crisis. Corporate Knights. (2022)
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