Myriam Gourfink

Myriam Gourfink is known for her extremely unusual writing, based on Kinetography Laban, as well as her close connection with contemporary music and new digital technologies. Her dance is essentially infused with yoga and her experience as a performer (particularly with Odile Duboc).

A figurehead of choreographical research in France, she received the Beaumarchais scholarship in 2000 for her project Too Generate. In the same year, she won the Villa Médicis Hors les Murs award (New York, 2000), and in 2002 she received a writing scholarship from the French Ministry of Culture and Communication for a project aiming to develop writing for choreographical composition and its integration into computer technology.

Her work is largely inspired by this relationship with IT : Glossolalie (1999), Too Generate (2000), L'écarlate (2001), Marine (2001), Rare (2002), Contraindre (2004), This is my house (2006), and has been presented in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Turkey, Japan, Canada, the United States etc.

The performance she creates requires extreme physical control resulting in a strange but boundless beauty. Every movement, every look, every breath is meticulously pre-determined to the millimetre, while the dancer's body moves along a continuous, measured and fascinating path.

The dance unfurls like a wave, a long vibration echoing the music that accompanies it.

As resident artist at IRCAM (Institute for Music/Acoustic Research and Coordination) in 2004–2005, and at the Fresnoy National Studio of Contemporary Arts in 2005–2006, Myriam Gourfink initiated educational work based on her composition processes, in France and abroad.

In january 2008, she becomes Artistic Director of the Center for Choreographic Research and Composition at the Royaumont Foundation.