Melanie Kloetzel, an Associate Professor at the University of Calgary, holds an M.F.A. in Dance from the University of California at Riverside in addition to a B.A. and an M.A. in History from Swarthmore College and the University of Montana, respectively. Kloetzel is the artistic director of kloetzel&co, which she founded in New York in 1997 and which has traveled with her across the US and now into Canada. kloetzel&co. has performed in New York at such venues as Danspace at St. Mark's Church, the Flea Theater, Judson Church, and the Clark Studio Theater at Lincoln Center, as well as internationally at the Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia, On the Boards in Seattle, University of Victoria, the Fluid Festival in Calgary, and the California Museum of Photography in Riverside, CA, among others. Since its inception, kloetzel&co. has moved between theatres and more unconventional sites, seeking out distinctive spaces and artistic collaborations along the way. Kloetzel's film works have been selected for such international film festivals as the Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema in Boulder, CO (where it was selected as a Best of Fest), the DANSCAMDANSE Festival in Belgium, the Danca em Foco Festival in Brazil, the Oklahoma Dance Film Festival, the Third Coast Dance Film Festival in Houston, TX, the GAMA Series at the EPCOR Centre in Calgary, and at the Festival Internacional de Videodanza de Uruguay. Kloetzel has received grants/awards from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Brooklyn Arts Council Community Arts program, the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center, the Gateway Technology Initiative, and the Movement Research Exchange program. She was also a 2003 recipient of the Chancellor's Distinguished Fellowship Award from The University of California. Kloetzel has performed nationally and internationally with such artists as Ann Carlson, Leah Stein, and Kim Arrow and was a member of Race Dance under the direction of Lisa Race from 1995-2000. Kloetzel was the Director of the Dance program at Idaho State University from 2004 - 2007. Her research has been published in numerous books/journals and her anthology, Site Dance: Choreographers and the Lure of Alternative Spaces, edited with Carolyn Pavlik, is currently available from the University Press of Florida.
