Marjana Krajač, Ph.D.

I am a dance studies scholar, choreographer, and researcher working at the intersection of spatial theory, choreographic practice, movement inquiry, and dance studies. I have been based in Zagreb (Croatia) and Berlin (Germany), and more recently in the United States. I hold a Ph.D. in Dance Studies from The Ohio State University.

My research examines sites, spaces, and environments through the lens of dance theory and history as a method for analyzing space and memory. My work examines how contemporary, experimental, avant-garde, and post-avant-garde practices emerge from—and exceed—their institutional, historical, and political conditions, with particular attention to Central and Eastern European contexts and to their conceptual entanglements with space, memory, and the environment.

I approach choreographic practice as a critical epistemology: a way of reconfiguring embodied knowledge through movement, spatial relations, and temporal composition. I approach the site of dance as a situated epistemic space in which bodily knowledge is generated, reflected on, and expanded. Through choreography, movement practice, and the moving image, I investigate how embodied gestures produce spatial and social experience—how bodies organize attention, structure perception, and make the material conditions of space perceptible.

My pedagogy integrates studio practice with theoretical inquiry, emphasizing choreography as a site where embodied knowledge and critical thought are produced together. I work across choreography, movement practice, and theory as interdependent forms of inquiry into the conditions of embodiment, space, and social experience.

My work is informed by and contributes to dance studies, dance history, urban studies, and critical approaches to embodiment and spatiality. I publish and present internationally in artistic and academic contexts, engaging choreography as both method and theory, and situating theory-based and practice-based research within broader debates across dance studies, critical theory, art history, urban studies, and research in dance, performance, and choreography.

I have published in Movement Research Performance Journal, Body, Space & Technology Journal, and International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, among others. I was an invited researcher at the Research Academy of the Zurich University of the Arts (Switzerland) and at the Choreoroam Europe research project, led by The Place London (UK), Rotterdam Dansateliers (Netherlands), Opera Estate Festival (Italy), a-2/Certamen Choreography Paso de Madrid (Spain), and Croatian Institute for Movement and Dance (Croatia).

I graduated from the State Conservatory of Contemporary Dance Ana Maletić (Zagreb, Croatia), an 8-year program focused on contemporary dance, movement analysis, dance history, and contemporary music, and from the Academy of Performing Arts in Berlin (Germany) with a BFA in Dance. I earned my Ph.D. in Dance Studies from The Ohio State University in 2024 as a Dean’s Distinguished University Fellow, Graduate Fellow, and Graduate Teaching Associate.

Recently, I have presented my research at the Emilio Ambasz Institute at MoMA, Princeton University, Yale University, the Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State University, the City University of New York, The New School, Kingston University London, the University of Glasgow, Ruhr University Bochum, the Dance Studies Association, the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, and the Centre for Expanded Poetics at Concordia University in Montréal, among others.

My most recent work was created for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb in June 2026 titled Reconstructions: A Landscape of Transpositions Across the Structure of the Surface—Breathing, Still; Notes on Time and can be accessed: here.