Karolina Bieszczad-Stie

Karolina Bieszczad-Stie

Choreographer, artistic researcher, producer,

MishMash role: Member · WP1 , WP2

Karolina Bieszczad-Stie is an Oslo-based choreographer and artistic researcher with a PhD in Performing Arts from Brunel University London (2010). She is the founder and artistic director of Butoh Encounters, a platform for interdisciplinary artistic research connecting contemporary dance with science and emerging technologies. Her practice explores the relationships between the human body, scientific phenomena and technological systems, with a particular interest in unpredictability, contingency and moments of disruption or misalignment. Drawing on Japanese Butoh dance, choreographic experimentation and micro-phenomenological approaches, she explores embodied perception, agency and human–machine interaction. Her research is developed through collaborations with scientists, engineers and technology developers, including researchers at OsloMet, the University of Oslo's Centre for Cancer Cell Reprogramming (CanCell), SINTEF and the University of Agder's Motion Lab. Her choreographic work has been presented at leading performing arts venues, including Dansens Hus Oslo and Black Box teater, as well as in interdisciplinary and international contexts, including the Nobel Peace Prize Forum and the European Robotics Forum 2026. Her projects include Limit(less), exploring human–robot interaction through programmed contingency; Turbulent Flows, investigating the unpredictable behaviour of turbulence; and Call of the Void, examining a fleeting glitch between bodily response and conscious interpretation. Her immersive VR project NanoPlanet explores bodily perception and shifting scales through microscopic imagery. She is particularly interested in choreography as a research methodology and in how artistic and scientific approaches can inform one another in investigating emerging technologies and possible human futures.

Artistic Research Choreography Contemporary Dance Japanese Butoh Embodied Research Practice-Based Research

Latest results

Type

Journal article

Artistic Performance

Conference

  1. Conference paper, 2026

    From Digital Ghosts to Operative Images: Archiving and Activating Butoh

    Karolina Bieszczad-Stie

  2. Conference paper, 2026

    From Microscopy to Immersion: Cancer Cell as an Object of Choreography & a Space of Experience

    Karolina Bieszczad-Stie

Magazine article

Lecture Speech