BIOGRAPHIES

Damaged Goods was founded in 1994 in Brussels as the dance company of American choreographer and performer Meg Stuart. Damaged Goods produces, coordinates and distributes Stuarts work through an open structure that facilitates all kinds of collaborations. This operation results in a range of diverse projects: from solos to group choreographies, from improvisation projects to installations and from written publications to video works.

Meg Stuart – choreographer
Meg Stuart (US/BE/DE) is a choreographer, director and dancer who lives and works in Berlin and Brussels. In collaboration with her company Damaged Goods she has realized over 30 productions, ranging from solos to large-scale choreographies, site-specific creations and improvisation projects. Stuart’s work moves freely between the genres of dance, theater and visual arts, driven by an ongoing dialogue with artists from different disciplines. Improvisation is an important part of her practice, as a strategy to go into physical and emotional states or the memory of them. In 2018, the Venice Biennale awarded her the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in the category of dance. Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods has an on-going collaboration with Kaaitheater and HAU Hebbel am Ufer.

Kotomi Nishiwaki – performer
Kotomi Nishiwaki (Japan) is a dancer/performer who started her dance education under the guidance of choreographer Jochen Heckmann. She continued her education at P.A.R.T.S in Brussels and followed Butoh courses with several teachers. She worked as a dancer for the Gisela Rocha company and collaborated with Joao Fiadeiro, Abraham Hurtado, Nir De Volff/Total Brutal, Corsin Gaudenz and Irina Müller. Her first solo work OFF,OFF,ON!! premiered in 2009 at the Citemor Festival in Portugal and was also presented on Tanz Tage Berlin. During the Temps d’Images Festival in Lisbon she performed the live installation Snake Chamber. Her first collaboration with Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods dates from 2005, when she was involved as a performer in the creation of Replacement (2006). Thereafter she also collaborated on Blessed (2007), All Together Now (2008), Do Animals Cry (2009), Atelier (2011) and VIOLET (2011).

Marcio Kerber Canabarro – performer
Márcio Kerber Canabarro (BR) is a dancer and performer based in Berlin and Budapest. In 2011 he graduated at SEAD, Salzburg. He is currently enrolled at the Embodied Myoreflex Therapy Practitioner certificate program at Impulstanz (AT). His dance art making is deeply informed by his having Retinitis Pigmentosa, a genetic degenerative disease which causes loss of peripheral vision, night blindness and consequently with its progression total blindness. He is interested in how our ability to care can form and inform the systems we create to live in, and how this ability takes physical shape to design our interfaces of connection.

With DEEPER F. Collective (HU) and A Bela Associação (PT), he launched the digital publication CARE WHERE? Zine and CARE Activism, Art and Electronic Music gatherings. He works for Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods since 2012 and has also collaborated with a.o. Adrienn Hód (Hodworks), Keith Hennessy, Peter Pleyer (CRANKY BODIES a/company) and Benoît Lachambre.

Renan Martins de Oliveira – performer
Renan Martins de Oliveira (BR) started his education in Rio de Janeiro at Deborah Colker Movement Center at the age of 16. At 17 he won a full scholarship to study at SEAD in Salzburg, Austria. In 2010 he joined the Research Cycle at P.A.R.T.S., where he focused more intensively on choreography and started developing his own work. Along with his choreographic practice he has worked as a dancer for Iztok Kovac, Marysia Stoklosa, Pierre Droulers, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Ceren Oran, Alexandra Waierstall, Daniel Linehan and Peter Savel. Renan’s choreographic work has been performed in different venues in Europe and abroad, and is now supported by Teatro Municipal Rivoli, Porto.

He has been dancing with Damaged Goods since 2013 as a replacement in VIOLET and as part of the creation of Atelier III, Projecting [Space[ and CASCADE.

Roger Sala Reyner – performer
Roger Sala Reyner studied physical theatre at the Institut del Teatre in Barcelona and choreography at the School for New Dance Development (SNDO) in Amsterdam. As a dancer he worked with Steve Paxton, Meg Stuart, Martin Nachbar, Jefta Van Dinther a.o.  He was involved in diverse creations such as Crying Machine (2010) in collaboration with Chris Leuenberger and Igor Dobricic, Gerro, Minos and Him (prizewinner at Danse Élargie 2010, Stuttgarter Tanzpreis 2013.) in collaboration with Simon Tanguy and Aloun Marchal. His choreographies ZOOM, and Come to my body, were invited to several festivals in Europe. He is a member of the collective John The Houseband, a group of dancers and choreographers who adventure in the music field. Roger Sala Reyner has an ongoing collaboration with Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods having performed in Atelier (2011 and 2012) and touring VIOLET (2011) throughout Europe and Brazil.

Varinia Canto Vila – performer
Varinia Canto Vila (CL) is a dancer, choreographer and movement researcher. In her choreographic work, she has explored medium-based themes and is developing an on-going research on the notion of extended choreography and the social body, and she is exploring the relationship between law and movement.
She graduated from Universidad de Chile, and from P.A.R.T.S in 1999. In 2014, she finished an MA in Art & Politics at the London Goldsmiths University. In 2017 she completed a post-graduate degree in a.pass (Advanced Performance And Scenography Studies), in Brussels. Canto Vila collaborated with various artists and choreographers from the independent dance/performance scene in Brussels, where she lived for 24 years: a.o. Claire Croizé, Marcos Simoes, Mette Edvardsen and Thomas Steyaert and Raul Maia. She collaborated with Meg Stuart and Damaged Goods on Highway 101 (2000) and VIOLET (2011).

Brendan Dougherty – music
Brendan Dougherty is a Berlin based composer and musician.  He is active as an improviser and producer of contemporary music and collaborates with Tony Buck, Jochen Arbeit and co-founded the bands Idiot Switch and Charrd. He has worked closely with choreographer Jeremy Wade, creating music for and performing in Throwing Rainbows Up (2008), I Offer Myself to Thee (2009) and There is No End to More (2009).  His work with Meg Stuart began in 2009 when they curated an improvisation series in HAU theater’s Politics of Ecstasy festival. They performed together in Dougherty’s OURSONGISLONG (2009) and Stuart’s Atelier I & II (2011 and 2012) and collaborated on Violet (2011) which is still touring in Europe.

Myriam Van Imschoot – dramaturge
Myriam Van Imschoot (1969) is a Brussels-based sound and performance artist since 2007. She holds an idiosyncratic place in the larger art field working in different media with numerous groups and their potentials in transitional societies. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally in galleries, musea, cinema’s and theaters in Europe and the United States; This involves commissions from Sculpture International Rotterdam, Nodar Binaural Sound Center, Rumpsti-Pumsti (Musik), MUU Galeria, Hyoid, MaerzMusik festival, Kunsthal Extra City in Antwerp, etc. Her engagements with Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods varied from being an artistic collaborator and performer (Auf den Tisch!, Crash Landing, A choreographic Laboratory), a writer and editor (Highway 101, Are we here yet?) to dramaturgy (Forgeries, Love and Other Matters (2004), Maybe Forever (2007), The Only Possible City (2008).

Jan Maertens – light
Jan Maertens works predominantly as a light designer within the international contemporary dance and performance field. He has created designs for Meg Stuart – VIOLET, Do Animals Cry, Blessed, Maybe Forever; for Philipp Gehmacher – Solo with Jack, In their name; for Padmini Chettur – Beautiful Thing 1 & 2; for Arco Renz – SolidStates, heroine; for Claire Croizé – Chant Eloigné, the Farewell; EVOL – and for Trajal Harrell – Antigone Sr. / Twenty looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church (L). There have also been collaborations on site specific projects, such as The On Orientations by An Kaler; the fault lines, a performative installation project by Meg Stuart, Philipp Gemacher and Vladimir Miller; Out of Grace, a choreographic event for museums and galeries by Lynda Gaudreau; ALL TOGETHER NOW, a participative performance by Meg Stuart for the Helmut List Halle in Graz. Further Maertens participated in Meg Stuart’s improvisation project Auf den Tisch! in Lissabon, New York and San Francisco.

Janina Audick – scenography
Scenographer and costume designer Janina Audick (Germany) studied Art and Design in Kassel, Berlin and Hamburg. From 2000 on she started collaborating with René Pollesch for productions in Podewil, Volksbühne am Rosa Luxemburg-Platz, Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, Burgtheater Wien and Münchner Kammerspielen. She also designed the set and the costumes for theatre creations by Christoph Schlingensief, Schorsch Kamerun, Stefan Pucher, the director’s collectif Rimini-Protokoll and for opera’s directed by Peter Musbach and Sebastian Baumgarten. For Meg Stuart / Damaged Goods she also created the set and costumes of Maybe Forever (2007), a coproduction with Philipp Gehmacher / Mumbling Fish. She lives in Berlin.