Learning to Dance Well is Learning to Live Well
About the artist
Michelle Boulé
As a performer, she collaborated with Miguel Gutierrez from 2001-2015, receiving a 2010 New York Dance and Performance Award “Bessie” for her performance as James Dean and collaboration in the creation of “Last Meadow” and 2015 “Bessie” nomination for her body of work with Gutierrez. Other artists she has worked with include Heather Kravas, Aine Stapleton, Bebe Miller, John Jasperse, John Scott, Deborah Hay (William Forsythe commission “If I Sing to You”), David Wampach, Donna Uchizono, Mark Dendy, Neal Medlyn, Christine Elmo, Neal Beasley, Beth Gill, Judith Sanchez-Ruiz, Doug Varone (Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Opera Colorado), Gabriel Masson, and playwright/director Rosie Goldensohn. She is part of the teaching faculty at Movement Research and The New School/Eugene Lang College in New York. She has also been faculty Hollins University and the University of Illinois, as well as a guest teacher at dance institutions throughout North and South America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. She received her B.F.A. from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. As a Certified BodyTalk Practitioner since 2008, Michelle has worked with over 500 hundred clients in New York and internationally through her online individual and group work
Artist statement
My work as a choreographer, performer, and teacher begins with the body—the information it holds and conveys and how this relates to our individual and collective potential. I research eastern and western views on somatics, healing and the physical expression of consciousness and aim to transmit this profound and at times esoteric knowledge of the body into the space and time of performance. My work often also addresses the power and mystery of the feminine.
My process involves intuitively collecting elements—movement, text, costumes, music—and allowing their poetic logic to arise in surprising ways. I don’t tend to work with a single idea when I’m creating. Rather, the piece arises through the distilling and framing of the multitude of content I collect.
With my long history as a performer, the creation of my work is guided by the performer’s role and trajectory within a dance and a deep investigation of physicality, as well as a penchant for humor and subtle upending of perspective. I aspire to give meaning to movement and the body—ultimately, a reminder and a space for the potential of what and who we are.
Watch a video profile on Michelle done by The New Yorker.
Dance
Choreography & Performance
Dance
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
