CROSSINGS is an artistic experience that goes both ways - a true creative exchange.

To give you a better idea of what I have to give to the CROSSINGS experience:

I work with breath and how it initiates and creates movement. Working with breath allows me to explore what is essential for me in dance: musicality and movement dynamics.

Here is a photo of my most recent choreography entitled: THREE BREATHS (2013). This project was created in collaboration with Laurence Pagés.

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Respiratory movement is the action that we use to breathe. Often perceived as an involuntary action, respiratory movement is intimately linked to our comportment, our relationship to gravity, our emotions, and our survival in this world.

Here is a photo of Airtight (2011) - a duet for breath and ballon. Photo by: Anne Girard

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Although the action of breathing unites us all, our way of breathing distinguishes us from one another just as the color of our hair or the size of our hand. It reveals our inner and intimate state of being and our unique way of entering into contact with the world. It is my ambition that by creating choreography from this universal action, the audience have an immediate synergy with the dance, to enter into respiratory empathy with the dancers and to bring their attention to their own breath experience.

In my choreographic process, these breath scores are interpreted by dancers who make movement choices stemming from the breath line. This puts the dancer in a position that is unique and active - creating movement from their personal sensation and singular way of interpreting the breathing pattern. This opens a structured creative dialogue which allows for a spirit of exchange, rather than hierarchy, in the relationship between the choreographer and the dancer.

In a deep breath moment in Senegal:

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what i hope that CROSSINGS will give to my work:

I feel that CROSSINGS is a residency that I will give me this opportunity to experiment my way of creating dance on dancers of diverse trainings - bringing new possibilities and horizons to my choreographic material. My dances develop from the quite minute and subtle initiation of the breath starting in the torso and resonating through the rest of the body. The precision and dynamic of the movement in the pelvis, spine and rib cage are essential to making the breath circulate clearly through the body - making this “breath dance” clear and visible to the spectator. In senegal, I was struck by the extraordinary mobility and percussive quality of the movement in the torso that I saw in the dancers. Coming from a dance training in which there is a high value place on verticality and canalizing the fluctuations of the spine, this hyper mobility of the torso was very interesting to me. It gave me the desire to see how a choreography emanating from the breath and the torso would be interpreted by these dancers! It will probably bring something very unexpected and new to my work!

The French Institute of South Africa is sponsoring our housing and our accommodation, I need your support to fund my travel expenses! My situation is a little atypical: I am an american living in France for 12 yeas. I can neither ask for the french or american government support - I'm not french, and I don't live in America ! So I am turning to you for support !

CROSSINGS #3 - Promote cultural exchange