Elke Van Dyke is a New York–based director, actor, teaching artist, aerialist, and producer specializing in Shakespeare and movement-based theatre, with training and experience in intimacy direction and choreography. She is Co-Founder and Director of Training for Yonder Window Theatre Company and has developed and led the New York Teen Shakespeare Intensive and Teen Shakespeare Conservatory NYC at the Actors Movement Studio.

Elke trained as both an actor and teacher at Shakespeare & Company with founders Tina Packer and Dennis Krausnick and later returned as a director-educator, directing The Tempest for the company’s Fall Festival. She also served as an adjunct professor at the University of West Florida, where she directed a movement-driven production of Carlo Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters, using Viewpoints, rasaboxes, and physical character development as central tools in the rehearsal process.

Her intimacy-direction training includes Levels 1 and 2 with Intimacy Directors and Coordinators (IDC). She also served as a teaching assistant for Judi Lewis Ockler’s Intimacy Direction course at New York University and gained practical production experience assisting on several projects, including as Assistant Intimacy Director for JASPER, Yonder Window’s Off-Broadway debut.

She holds an MFA in Performing Arts Management from Brooklyn College and a BA in Theatre from The New School.

In addition to coaching professional and young professional actors through workshops and private sessions, Elke has headed three high school theatre programs nationally and internationally, including in Mexico. She also served as Theatre Education Special Projects Manager for the New York City Department of Education, where she co-authored American Voices, a theatre curriculum for high school teachers, and collaborated with the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Education Department to bring Shakespeare into New York City classrooms as part of the RSC’s summer residency at Lincoln Center.

Elke continues to facilitate professional development workshops for the NYC Department of Education, training teachers in theatre pedagogy, Shakespeare, and physical theatre techniques. Her work as an educator is grounded in the same ensemble-based, physically engaged approach that informs her directing and performance practice.

Most recently, Elke served as Intimacy Director and Choreographer for Yonder Window’s Techies at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

As a performer, Elke plays—and flies as—Titania in Yonder Window’s The Dream Project, an aerial, devised, movement-driven reimagining of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, developed through a five-year creative process.