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milkleaf is a multimedia contemporary dance company contributing to the vitality of the arts

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Charlotte Griffin,
Founder & Artistic Director

With three decades of international artistic and academic experience, Charlotte is recognized for generating emotionally resonant dances, building bridges between higher education and the professional field, and cultivating holistic learning environments. She celebrates the arts as an essential component of a thriving society.

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Charlotte Griffin

Founder and Artistic Director

Charlotte Griffin, from Durham, NC, is a California-based contemporary choreographer and Associate Professor of Dance at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) exploring the fleeting and enduring nature of the human experience in live performance, screendance, and multimedia platforms. In 2020 she founded milkleaf to support multidisciplinary collaboration across a broad aesthetic and technological field. With three decades of international artistic and academic experience, she is recognized for generating emotionally resonant dances, building bridges between higher education and the professional field, and cultivating holistic learning environments. She celebrates the arts as an essential component of a thriving society.

Versed in multiple social, concert dance, and somatic forms, Charlotte’s choreography emphasizes her background in classical modern, post-modern, and contemporary techniques. She premiered the ensemble High Windows in February 2025 at the Irvine Barclay Theatre and the solo Kindling at the 2023 McCallum Theatre’s Palm Desert Choreography Competition. An avid collaborator, Charlotte recently devised movement for Katherine Behar’s single video channel installation We Grasp at Straws (take one) and for the durational performance installation Nevertheless, she persisted (and danced) by Mariángeles Soto-Díaz.

Charlotte’s repertory has been commissioned by Adaptations Dance Theater, The Cambrians, the American Dance Festival, The Juilliard School, The Hartt School Dance Division, BJM Danse in Montreal, Danza UDLAP, Barcelona Institut del Teatre, Princeton University, Rutgers University, and more. She has had the privilege of creating ballets for The University of North Carolina School of the Arts Choreographic Institute, The New York Choreographic Institute with the New York City Ballet and School of American Ballet, the American Ballet Theatre Summer Intensive in Austin, and Eliot Feld's Ballet Tech Kids Dance.

Charlotte’s own education and professional trajectory have deep ties to the American Dance Festival, where she studied from 1994-1996 and was honored to receive the Scripps/ADF Primus-Tamiris Fellowship for the International Choreographers Commissioning Program in 2005. In addition, she has been a guest artist at ArcDanz and Lux Boreal in Mexico, Springboard Danse Montreal, Korea National University of Arts, The Yard, Cayman Island Arts Festival, the Bates Dance Festival, and more. Her award-winning dance films, Arms of Gravity (2026), All of Us (2023), Walls Running (2022), Nostalgia’s Window (2022), Perhaps I was T/Here? (2018), Barefoot Negotiations (2009), and Raven Study (2007), influence her continued exploration of choreo-cinematic form. 
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As a young dancer, Charlotte earned her BFA in Dance from The Juilliard School under the direction of Mr. Benjamin Harkarvy and was honored with The Martha Hill Award for excellence in her field of study.  Based in NYC, she collaborated and performed in projects with David Neumann, Yasmeen Godder, Sue Bernhard, Toshiko Oiwa, Karen Graham, Robert Battle, and Larry Keigwin with an emphasis on dance-theater. From 2000-2005, she served as the Director of Choreography and a dancer for the NYC and national/international tours of Kate’s Chink-O-Rama, a cultural satire and musical comedy revue by Kate Rigg with David Jung.

Charlotte holds an MFA from UT Austin, currently studies Taoist Qigong forms, primarily Xiantianwujimen (Primordial Limitless Gate) with Dr. Eva Wong, and maintains a gentle self-practice in modified Vinyasa and Ashtanga Yoga. In 2015, she joined the UCI Dance Department, with a student-centered approach to modern technique, composition, and screendance. Charlotte aims to generate nourishing and empowering artistic praxis for the next generation of dance artists.

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Two people are dancing closely in the foreground while a group of people in the background are stretching or practicing dance moves in a studio.
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