Chloe Ilene, Artistic Director

Chloe Ilene Misner is a dance-maker, performer, and educator. She is the Artistic Director of New Industry Dance and a dance educator for the Performing Arts Magnet program at Riley High School. Chloe has worked and taught at various dance studios and dance-related businesses, including Michiana Dance Ensemble, Southold Dance Theater, and The Ballet Shop. Her background in Modern, Ballet, West African dance and Yoga now inform her manner of movement. Her further studies in improvisation, contemporary forms, Gaga technique, composition and somatics influence her theory and approach to creation and performance presence. Chloe approaches movement as investigative physical research, an act of fusion between the mind and body. Her role as a witness to process guides her ideas and direction for creation. She is interested in activating the imagination and "thinking body" while in movement and leans toward the organic relationships that arise between others in the movement space.

Chloe was a company dancer and collaborator with Fischer Dance from 2015-2018. During this time she developed an interest in working with underutilized spaces. Her capacity for contact improvisation and partner work were strengthened under Fischer’s direction. She became Assistant Director of Fischer Dance in March 2018. In July 2018, she took directorship of New Industry Dance, a revisioning of Fischer Dance.

In 2016, Chloe attended a Gaga Intensive where she had the opportunity to learn from Bobbi Jene Smith, Ian Robinson, and Adi Salant. In 2019, she was selected as a Summer 2019 MODULE artist with Sidra Bell Dance New York. Chloe consistently continues her dance and movement education. Some memorable experiences have been her times attending classes and intensives with other dance peers such as Stephanie Zaletel, Maayan Sheinfeld, K.J. Holmes, Barbara Mahler, Michelle Boulé, Yvonne Meier, Juliette Mapp, Vicky Shick, Mariana Valencia, and Ground Grooves (Laura Berg and Gracie Whyte), among others. 

Chloe was the recipient of an Individual Advancement Grant from the Indiana Arts Commission to provide movement education sessions, create a production with a community cast of movers, and host a series of open community forums to engage with the city. In October 2019, she was selected as a panel discussion leader for the Indiana Arts Commission Homecoming Conference, where she discussed her work with non-arts organizations who share similar IDEA values. Her screendance, live work, and youth work have been featured at Midwest RADFest (Midwest Regional Alternative Dance Festival) in 2019, 2020, 2022, 2024, and 2025. She was commissioned as choreographer for Clay High School Drama Department’s production of H2O: A Play About Water, which was awarded 1st place and Best Ensemble at both the 2020 Regional and State competition for the Indiana Thespian’s Society. Her self-produced film The Wardrobe has been an Official Selection for Shut In Dance Festival, Midwest RADFest (2022), and American Dance Festival’s Movies by Movers (2023). In November of 2024, Chloe pioneered FIELDWORKS Dance Festival - South Bend’s first contemporary dance festival, hosted by New Industry Dance. Her hope is to make this an annual event celebrating and uplifting the dance as an important and valued language of creative expression in the Great Lakes coastal region of the Midwest. 

Chloe holds a B.A. in Anthropology and French, with a minor in Dance, from Indiana University South Bend, where she worked closely with Carolynn Hine-Johnson, Kelly Burgét, and Colin Raybin.