DD Dorvillier

Through her artistic practice DD Dorvillier (1967, Puerto Rico) has always challenged pre-established definitions, including her own, of dance and choreography. By building works through physical, conceptual, and philosophical approaches she researches the complex relationships between gesture, performing, spectatorship, embodiment, language, and perception, in a playful yet urgent manner. An approach to sound, light, and objects as quasi-linguistic materials is at the heart of her process. In recent years she has developed a special attention to how place and site inform her artistic work.

Before moving to France in 2010, she lived and worked in New York City for 20 years. In 1991 she and dancer/choreographer Jennifer Monson created the Matzoh Factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. For over a decade the studio was a grassroots haven for wild experimentation where artists congregated for shows, rehearsals, parties, and readings. Over a dozen of the works documented in  A catalogue of steps were created there, as well as RMW(a) & RMW + Vitamin C (1994/2004)  an ongoing collaboration with Jennifer Monson.

Post-Matzoh Factory works include No Change or “freedom is a psycho-kinetic skill” (2005), Nottthing Is Importanttt (2007), CPAU, Get Ready! (2009), Pièce Sans Paroles D(2010), The Blanket Dance (2011), Danza Permanente (2012), A catalogue of steps (since 2013), Diary of an Image (2014), Extra Shapes (2015), Only One of Many (2017), Vois-tu celle-là qui s'en fuitD (2017), Danza Fuera Permanente (2019), A difference between 1 and 2 (2020), The line is a dot (2022), Untitled landscapes ,a endeavour which includes : Les yeux du menuisier (2022), Landscape Stories (2023), Dance is the archeologist, or an idol in the bone. (2024), and a new project currently in development pf,pf.

Her works have been  presented and produced in Europe and The United States. She has received numerous awards including The Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Foundation for Contemporary Art Fellowship as well as two Bessie awards, for choreography and performance. Dorvillier has always taught and worked in pedagogical situations with other artists, and this is a major component of her artistic practice. She is a certified teacher of Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT) and has 30 years of experience in the practice of Authentic Movement. In 2009 she began developing Touch Move Talk Write (TMTW), an approach integrating these four basic elements of studio practice and research.

In 2008 she was artistic mentor (alongside Trajal Harrell) of the DanceWeb program at ImPulsTanz. She worked as Associated artist-researcher with the exerce MA program at ICI - CCN in Montpellier 2017-2019 and was Associated Artist at the Centre de développement chorégraphique national (CDCN) “Le Dancing” in Dijon, France 2019-2022. In 2020 she and composer Sébastien Roux inaugurated La Corvette, a grassroots space for research and experimentation in dance and music, in rural Burgundy, France.