Biography

Marloes van Houten
Artistic director of Forge Collective
Dancer/Choreographer/Writer

Dr. Marloes van Houten (1982) is a Dutch performing artist, art director, choreographer and movement educator.

She loves to cross-pollinate. In the Netherlands, she graduated in Performing & Community Arts (BA), Visual Arts (PI certificate, Willem De Kooning Academie), International Development Studies (MSc. Honors). She also studied ‘Expressive Arts for Performance/Therapy (Advanced Post-Master) in Switzerland, and recently completed her PhD in Hong Kong focussing on the Life/Art Process as a choreographic tool amidst Hong Kong’s current social political challenges.

Marloes has been teaching dance, pilates, yoga, conditioning classes since 2000, such as for Parnassos Cultural Centre (Utrecht, NL), The New dance festival (Beijing 2016), Utrechtse Dansacademie (NL, 2016), Y-Space (Hong Kong, 2015/2016), City Contemporary Dance Centre (Hong Kong), Heart Yoga (NL), etcetera.

While raised in the Netherlands, she lived, performed, choreographed, led projects globally. In 2013, she founded a therapy and coaching practice which focusses on improving people’s overall wellbeing through workout-, nutrition-, and expressive arts therapy. In 2014, she started this cross cultural dance/art collective Forge and acts as it’s artistic director.

She worked as a professional dancer in various companies and projects, such as Dance Theatre Cadans (Eric Velu Productions), Second Tower of Babel (CCCD, Hong Kong), I-AM concepts (Singapore/Hong Kong), MDdance (Monique Duurvoort Danst, NL), Dutch National Ballet (aerialist/dancer for ‘The New Prince’), Vivo Ballet based in Rome (Giselle). She held an Artist in Residency in a program curated by theatre director Ho Ying Fung (Blank Space Studios, Hong Kong).

Marloes also creates her own work as an art director and choreographer, in which she often also takes one of the dancing roles. Her most recent work is: ‘Forge Portmanteau’ (Hong Kong 2015), ‘Poiema’ (i-dance festival Hong Kong, 2015), ‘The Voyage’ (HKICAROS International Choreography Festival & Dutch Days of Hong Kong, 2016), ‘Speak’ (I-dance HK, 2016), ‘Muscari Armeniacum’ and ‘Flora, Forgotten and Forgiven’ (Art Rotterdam NL, 2017), ‘Deep Fall Puppet’ (Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Beiijng China 2017), LOSS.T (CBK, Amsterdam, 2018), ‘Mimesea’ (Sichuan Modern Dance Company, China, 2018), ‘Child of Surrender’ (dance photography series & short dance film, Hong Kong, 2018), ‘Museum of Humanities’ (Dansduet for the museum opening, NL, 2019), ‘Waaghals: Stories of Love and Intimacy from Afar’ (Painting exhibition, with a dance and story telling program, NL, 2019).