KIRSTAN CLIFFORD is a dance-based researcher and educator who is based in Austin, TX.

After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in 2009, she collaborated with and performed for artists such as Tameca Jones, Julie Atlas Muz, Laurel Atwell, Gerda König, Jean-Claude Lessou, Katie Mae Hebert, Trisha Brown, Julie Natanielsz, Emily P. Dunne, The Color Condition, Karen Nelson, and luciana achugar.

Kirstan founded and curated STUDIO SERIES SHOW from 2016-2019, a salon-style performance event that presented the work of Austin dance artists through a critique-in-process model.

In 2020, Kirstan received her MSc Dance Science from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London, England. Her thesis work detailed the lived experience of dance-based practitioners working in palliative and end of life care.

Her work is inspired by the nervous system’s registration of nonverbal communication, mind-body integration, and the study of embodiment practices within social and community spaces. Currently, she is working as a freelance researcher for professional dance artists and choreographers. 

She gave birth to her first child in July 2021.