PRESS KIT
Marie-Christine Giordano (founder) grew up in the French-speaking town of Fribourg, Switzerland. Though drawn to dance as a child, her formal dance training began late with Beatrix Consuelo in Geneva, and with Marika Besabrasova in Monte-Carlo. In 1987, a Swiss scholarship facilitated her study of modern dance in New York City at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. Soon after, she was granted a Merit Scholarship from the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance. With the Martha Graham Dance Company, Ms. Giordano performed in the ballet Panorama at City Center and on tour internationally. Ms. Giordano premiered several of her own pieces at the Martha Graham Center, and in 1993, she was sent to represent the school at the Vienna International Dance Festival, where she performed her own choreographed solos. In 1996, she was commissioned to choreograph and perform an opening solo for Jean Cocteau’s play The Human Voice at the Bouwerie Lane Theatre, NYC. Becoming increasingly interested in presenting her own works, Marie-Christine founded her company in 1998. The group has appeared at St. Mark’s Church, 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center, the Tribeca Performing Arts Center, BAX (Brooklyn Arts Exchange), the Swiss Institute, and other venues, as well as in Europe. With headquarters in Brooklyn, Ms. Giordano maintains a daily teaching schedule, offering an outreach dance program to public school children and classes to professionals and nonprofessionals. The Swiss native continues to love being in New York, settled in “a place where dance moves the world’s people to meet.”
Ms. Giordano’s technique, based on the best principles of modern dance and ballet, develops in her dancers a powerful center, enabling them the freedom to explore the full potential of their physical and artistic expression. The movements combine spinning, shifts of the weight, slow motion and the capacity to go from total control to total abandon. It offers an exploration of seemingly contrasting elements: from a pure and crisp line to disintegration, from the energy of sound to the power of silence. It investigates the concept of time and timing. Not a narrative work, her new creation in progress, aims at speaking to people’s kinesthetic sensibility and to their humanity. Early on, critic Jennifer Dunning remarked on Ms. Giordano’s fascination with quality of movement and texture: “Marie-Christine Giordano’s Low Feed… was an exploration of differing textures of dancing.”(NYT, 11/99)
PRESS QUOTES
The New York Times
Close encounters: amorous, amorphous and abstract
“The arresting figure of a platinum-blond, cropped-haired woman holding a strapless dress in front of her naked body boded well for the Marie-Christine Giordano Dance Company’s ‘Nurtured or Neutered’, which opened at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center on Thursday night. As Marilyn Monroe’s languorous rendition of ‘She Acts Like a Woman Should’ wafted through the air, the woman — Ms. Giordano herself — gradually crumpled her body into a crouch, a quizzical expression on her fine-boned face”...
“The movement is ... eye-catching; early on in the piece, two women roll over each other’s bodies, pushing off the floor to create angled shapes, entangling in ways that could be an amorous encounter or simply abstract. Later to jazzy soundtrack, Mr. Villanueva performs a leaping solo that exploits his supple leg extensions and nimble attack”...
–Roslyn Sulcas
“Miss Giordano’s intensity was admirable.”–Jack Anderson
“Marie-Christine Giordano’s ‘Low Feed’...was an exploration of differing textures of dancing.”–Jennifer Dunning
La Liberté
“...dans un souci à la fois d’esthétique et de sincérité, Marie-Christine Giordano privilégie une qualité de mouvement, une fluidité totale qui impressionne...... À la fois aériens et terriens.”–Florence Michel
Translation:“...with a special concern for both aesthetics and sincerity, Marie-Christine Giordano emphasizes a movement quality, a total fluidity that is impressive...... Simultaneously airborn and grounded.”
“Elle offre l’essence dramatique d’un language personnel qui, on l’espère, sera montré sur d’autres scènes de Suisse.”–Florence Michel
Translation:“She offers the dramatic essence of a personal language that we hope will be presented in other Swiss venues.”
Swiss Review
“The company’s style is a post-modern one with emphasis on kinesthetic and psychological sensibilities.”–Egila Lex
Arts Cure
Uniting the intellect and the body
“Marie-Christine Giordano is attempting to explore the aspects of what it means to be a woman. Part of that identity is just in the name itself, setting one apart from those who are not Woman, a society to which one is inducted, without ever being told what any of it means. Three women play with various words applied to women, moving to them, throwing the words back and forth to each other, as they dress in each others’ clothes: Another part is the forms of what are expected of one; represented in this piece by a white tulle formal gown, suggesting a bridal gown, though one that slips down to reveal the breasts. Sometimes this is held in front of the very tall Ms. Giordano, striking with her white hair, whose naked body peeps from behind it as she carries out minimalist movement. Yet another part is sensuality, best realized by the one male member of the company, Roberto Villanueva, whether performing a solo or being cradled and seduced by Ms. Giordano, fully dressed in her gown, or attempting to take this external identity from her as she resists.”–Roberta Pikser
