About Stark Dance
Stark Dance is a Minneapolis-based contemporary dance group founded and directed by Daniel Stark. The group creates bold, uncompromising performance work that explores what it means to be human — moving across a broad emotional spectrum, from laugh-out-loud humor to profound sadness, tenderness, and struggle.
News & Upcoming Events
- Audition for Stark Dance and Black Label Movement at the Barbara Barker Center for Dance, October 17, 2026
- Choreography Commission for Gustavus Adolphus College, January 2027
- Stark Dance Performance at Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts, March 5 & 6, 2027
Daniel Stark
Artistic Director / Choreographer
Daniel is a choreographer and educator. His choreography was featured in "Earth: Healing the Rift," a performance in Kenya involving collaborations between visual and performing artists from Africa, Russia, Italy, India, Greece, New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S. He has set dances on the Beijing Dance Academy, Quad Cities Ballet, the Aha! Dance Theatre, Bellingham Repertory Dance Company, Same Planet Different World Dance, 940 Dance Company, Vandance Inc., and Zenon Dance Company. His choreography has been selected for the Kennedy Center performance of the American College Dance Association (ACDA) five times: Diplomacy (2004), Politics Religion Sex (2010), Crash (2012), Television: Or (And Now, Our National Anthem) (2016), and Peek (2018).
As a dancer, Daniel performed works by Alfonso Cata, Beth Corning, David Dorfman, Louis Falco, Françoise Martinet, Lonne Moretton, Charles Moulton, David Parsons, and Shapiro & Smith. As an instructor he has taught at the Beijing Dance Academy, Zenon in Minneapolis, and at the University of Iowa for three years as a Visiting Assistant Professor. He was the recipient of the Iowa Arts Fellowship in 2002. Daniel holds a B.S. in Psychology and an M.F.A. in Dance from the University of Iowa, and is currently an Associate Professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato.