about

about marion/
My name is Marion and I am a dance artist, dance maker and dance educator based in New York City. My work has been presented by Gibney (Work Up), Brooklyn Studios for Dance (SoundStep), Green Space, Triskelion Arts, Movement Research at Judson Church, Center for Performance Research (Fall Movement), Amherst College, the Dance Now Festival and the Domestic Performance Agency. I have been an artist in residence at Amherst College, Gibney (Work Up), Peaceable Barn, Turkeyland Cove Foundation, Prattsville Art Center, Catwalk Art Institute, and the Domestic Performance Agency. I have toured my work nationally to Seattle WA and Amherst MA. I began making dances professionally while living and learning in New Orleans (2011-2015). My work was presented there at the New Orleans Fringe Festival, Dancing Grounds, the Contemporary Arts Center, and the Tigermen Den.

As a performer, I currently dance for Kendra Portier and Kinesis Project Dance Theatre, and am collaborating with dance artist Simon Thomas-Train. Since moving to New York I have had the pleasure of working with Michelle Boulé, Athena Kokoronis, Stephan Koplowitz, Annie Kloppenberg, Shandoah Goldman/Carte Blanche Performance, Vanessa Justice, Shaun Irons & Lauren Petty, Michiyaya, Hollis Bartlett, and apprenticing and performing with David Dorfman Dance. In addition to performing and making work, I also teach dance to adults and young dancers in the New York area. I am currently on faculty at Gibney, Dancewave and Greenwich Country Day School.

Originally from Riverside, Connecticut, a white Latina with a mother from Caracas, Venezuela and a father born and raised in Ancón, Panama (at the time part of the Panama Canal Zone), I was partly raised in Oaxaca, Mexico, where my parents (both Mesoamerican Archaeologists) do their excavations. I graduated with honors from Vassar College in 2009, where I studied Geography-Anthropology and was a member of the Vassar Repertory Dance Theatre for four years. Instilled with wanderlust and the constant desire to take risks, listen and learn, I have been lucky over the last 10 years to call Honolulu Hawaii, Boulder Colorado, and New Orleans Louisiana home before landing in New York City in 2014.

about the work/
It is an energetic and tonal collaging- sourcing imagination and desire in addition to our very real world, calling for transformation and an undoing of ourselves, and inviting us to feel, ask questions and consider what else both imaginatively and constructively. My process includes rigorous dancing, subtle somatic investigations that siphon nuanced emotion, and vocalizations that create a world for us to live in, dream in, journey through and be transformed by. I am interested in exploring a wildness and primal quality of the body through movement and vocalization practices. My work is immersive and dreamlike while living distinctly wherever it happens. We share this space together. I prioritize a nonlinear creative process and embrace the practice of collaging in visual, written and movement forms as both research and choreographic tool. In addition to a physical and vocal practice, my process includes reading, writing, photography, drawing, discussion and listening. I critically engage in socio-political discourse through my art making; I believe art should support progress towards more mindful societies, and I commit to making work that encourages dialogue. It's a priority in my process to critically examine my privilege and whiteness while deeply listening and being an ally active in the relentless work of dismantling white supremacy. My work takes risks to explore how transformation happens personally, socio-politically, kinesthetically and imaginatively. Engaging with concepts larger and more complicated than myself, I push my person past physical and imaginative comfort to discover, examine and shape what transformation occurs.