Photo by Chance Jackson

About the artist

Michelle Boulé

Michelle Boulé is a Missoula-based dance artist whose work explores the intersections of traditional and contemporary healing practices with art, to create aesthetically enlivened experiences that remind us of the potential of what and who we are. Boulé has received commissions and presentations from multiple venues in New York (where she lived for 21 years) and beyond, including The Chocolate Factory, Danspace Project, Triple Canopy, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Summer Stages Dance @ICA Boston, River to River Festival, The Met Breuer (with Okkyung Lee), and ISSUE Project Room. Awards received include: Distinguished Legacy Award from the University of Illinois, New York Foundation for the Arts Choreography Fellowship, Boekelheide Creativity Award, Jerome Foundation Travel & Study Grant, New Music USA Grant, Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Grant, and residencies from Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, MacDowell, Yaddo, Bemis Center, Movement Research, Dance Ireland, and MT Open AIR. She has also been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Dance Magazine. She is a “Bessie” Award-winning performer, having collaborated with Miguel Gutierrez, Bebe Miller, John Jasperse, Deborah Hay, and Aine Stapleton, amongst others. She has danced, taught, and choreographed in over 25 countries, and also runs a coaching business that helps creatives all over the world manifest their visions with clarity, confidence, and aligned prosperity.

Artist statement

“I aim to transmit profound and at times esoteric knowledge of the body into the space and time of performance.”

Michelle believes artists are conduits and transmitters, here to challenge existing paradigms and structures, and to creatively and lovingly usher forth the evolution of our consciousness. In her work, she reaches for an exquisite and unusual connection to beauty, humor, rhythm, nature, and the fullest spectrum of human expression. Influenced by over 25 years of practice in somatic therapies and energy healing, her work’s deep ambition is to remind us that we are all incredible creators and can use that power for the greatest good of all.

Watch a video profile on Michelle done by The New Yorker.

When Ms. Boulé is onstage, it’s hard to take your eyes off of her…

Siobhan Burke, The New York Times

Michelle Boulé is a force of nature. She dances like a volcano and I can’t take my eyes off her.

Lisa Kraus, thINKingDANCE

...Boulé’s strangely magical naïveté – opened up an uncanny space between experience and consciousness.

Hong-An Truong, Idiom Mag

Dance

Choreography & Performance

Michelle Boulé is “Bessie” Award winning performer who since 1999 has dedicated much of her practice to working as a performer/collaborator in the works of several artists. These artists include Heather Kravas, Miguel Gutierrez, Bebe Miller, John Jasperse, Deborah Hay, John Scott, Donna Uchizono, David Wampach, Christine Elmo, Neal Medlyn, Beth Gil, Mark Haim, Doug Varone (Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Opera Colorado) Gabriel Masson, and playwright/director Rosie Goldensohn.

Tunic by Katrin Schnabl

Dance

Teaching
Michelle’s teaching combines information from her studies of various somatic and energetic modalities as well as her professional experience as a performer and artist over the last 20 years. She has been known to incorporate a deep understanding of movement, performance, and creativity with an inspired, full-hearted, and playful atmosphere. She has been guest faculty at Hollins University and the University of Illinois, teaching technique, improvisation, composition and performance, and somatic studies. She teaches regularly in New York as faculty at Movement Research and Eugene Lang College at The New School, and has also taught numerous classes and workshops throughout North and South America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. Her teaching is very much influenced by her 11 year practice as a Certified BodyTalk Practitioner working with energy and consciousness-based healing, as well as her studies in the Feldenkrais Method, Body-Mind Centering, Alexander Technique, Franklin Method, Fitzmaurice Voicework, Continuum Movement, yoga, and Ayurveda.

Movement Practice Class Description

I invite you to come to class with the belief that your body has all that it needs and that within the collective of the room, we expand our resources even further. We’ll use guided improvisations, honoring each individual’s unique pathways for engaging and understanding. We’ll also work with simple exercises and imagery, utilizing specific ideas about anatomy and kinesiological function. There will be time to observe how our actions, thoughts, perceptions, emotions, and breath shape our experience. The accumulation of this information will help us access states where physically efficient, creative engagement is the default choice! Class will end with an application of these ideas to choreographed phrase work.

classes taught

  • Movement Technique Class
  • Art Healing Making Doing Being
  • Performance and Persona
  • Tools for Creative Practice – The Art of Listening
  • BodyTalk and Open Movement

lectures given:

  • Personal History as a Professional Dancer & Artist
  • BodyTalk & Dance/Art Practice

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