MARIE CHOUINARD
Choreographer
In 1978 Marie presented her first work,
Crystallization, which immediately established
her as an exceptional artist driven by an
infectious search for the genuine. After 12 years
as a solo performer and choreographer, Marie
Chouinard founded her own company in 1990,
the Compagnie Marie Chouinard.
Marie Chouinard has lived in New York, Berlin,
Bali and Nepal. Her travels, her curiosity, her
eclectic studies and her understanding of
various techniques allow her to explore the body
in different ways. She has created more than 50
solo and group works. The works created since
1978 reflect the concerns of this surprising
choreographer: her view of dance as a sacred
art, her respect for the body as a vehicle of that
art, her virtuoso approach to performance and
the invention of a different universe for each
new piece.
In Marie Chouinard’s alphabet, elements
respond to one another as in a classical
structure while integrating different cultural
understandings of the body as infinitely
intelligent. Her raw material is the dancers’
flesh, bones and muscles, the instinct and vital
impulse of the human body whose intimate
connections she exposes. As a carrier of
meaning, each gesture becomes the “phoneme”
of a thought imbedded in the body, while form
reflects the dancer’s soul as it resides in organs,
cells and energetic circuits. Celebrating the
human body as a vehicle of life, Marie Chouinard
and her contributors work together to create
choreographic pieces that reveal a world of
primal light, coded sounds and protean forms,
through vigorous and incandescent movements.