Amy Chavasse, (she, her, &) choreographer, performer, educator, improviser, and Artistic Director of ChavasseDance&Performance is currently a Professor in the Department of Dance at the University of Michigan, located on the traditional territories of the Anishinaabe people of the Three Fires – the Ojibwe, Ottawa and Potawatomi. Upcoming projects include a drag / dance / music / storytelling work called afterlife plunder, with I Broke the Vase, an Athens, Greece based experimental music/ video duo, and Dancers in Flames- Expendable Bodies in Incendiary Times, with Luciana Acuña and Nola Sporn Smith.
Recent collaborations include Contacto Improvisación sobre el filo de la democracia: improvisando nuevos pasos de Sur a Norte, presented at the Dance Studies Association conference in Buenos Aires in August 2024. Post conference, she continued working with artists in a week-long residency with Sarah Konner, Marina Tampini and Cristina Turdo, culminating in a video and book project. Recent projects include curating and producing an evening of dance with guest artists from Hong Kong – Terry King Fai Tsang and Jay Peng Zhang called soul /over /encounter as part of the University of Michigan’s Art & Resistance Theme semester. She also created and performed a new solo, Death in Dreams. She performed with Luciana Acuña, Paty Solòrzano, Austin Selden and Nola Sporn Smith (dance artists from Brooklyn, Buenos Aires and Mexico City), in How to Stay in a Dream with the Compañía Nacional de Danza de Costa Rica in San José, Costa Rica.
In 2019 she created a duet, Plunder Thunder with Nicole Reehorst and Emily Soong, for the Detroit Dance City Festival. An invitation to participate as a guest artist at 201Urban Spaces Shanghai Festival from October 3-9, 2019, led to performances of Plunder Thunder at The Shanghai Tower, teaching at The Shanghai International Dance Center, and The Children’s Palace in Shanghai. Plunder Thunder was revived and reimagined in collaboration with Stephanie Gennusa and Rowan Janusiak, followed by performances at Detroit Dance City Festival, The New Dance Festival (Daejon, South Korea) and the Goyang International Dance Festival (Seoul) in September 2022, as well as guest teaching at Kyunghee University in Goyang, and Chungnam University in Daejon.
Her work has also been presented at Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out, Movement Research at Judson Church, Links Hall /Chicago, Dance New Amsterdam, The Dance Complex- Boston, the Texas Improvisation Festival and other venues. Internationally, she has taught, and her work has been presented in Uppsala, Sweden: Cuba: Kaunus and Vilnius, Lithuania: Vienna; Cali, Colombia; Vancouver BC; Buenos Aires; the American Dance Festival/ Henan (China) and the Beijing Dance Festival, at Duncan 3.0 in Rome, and at ResExtensa’s Instituto Vittoria in Giovinazzo, Italy. She was on faculty at Florence Summer Dance from 2007- 2015, and ProDanza Italia from 2007-2013. She premiered Low Winter Light, a duet for Donnell Oakley and Jessica Jolly at the Beijing Dance Festival in 2013. She collaborated with members of Tanz Tangente in Berlin in 2015 and 2016. Collaborating with Sarah Konner and Austin Selden (BFA Dance alums), she contributed to the creation of an evening length work- Emi, Amy and Mimi, the Celebrated Love Partners and Their Bicycle Emi Nomo, that had performances in Brooklyn and the Arthur Miller Theater. She collaborated with Sarah Konner, Austin Selden and Beth Graczyk in the creation of a companion work to “Emi Nomo” called Manicula is a Revolver, in 2019.
She presented improvisation workshops at the International Society of Improvised Music in Chateaux D’Oex, Switzerland in June 2015, and an alternative movement presentation at the University of Valetta, Malta as part of the Dance Studies Association conference in 2018. She was a WFSS faculty at the American Dance Festival from 2009-2014. Touring the U.S. in 2015-16 with Sola, Dances by and for Women, she created and performed a solo, Conspiracy Going, Amy Needs A Lot of Empathy, prompting Melanie Weisen of the Tampa Art Breaker to write: “The most polarizing of the six pieces, Amy Chavasse’s Conspiracy Going, seemed to be a rejection of the easy, digestible works seen on television. A mix of spoken word and dance, Chavasse, with no musical accompaniment, performed the intensely personal piece with incredible athleticism and passion. Her verbal commentary of sadism and authority, matched by her powerful and aggressive physicality, was the most provocative piece of art I have seen in the past year.”
Collaborators include Sarah Konner, Xan Burley, Alex Springer, Austin Selden, Peter Schmitz, Lisa Gonzalez, Beth Graczyk, Donnell Oakley, Jessica Jolly, Aidan Feldman, Malcolm Tulip, Steve Rush and others. Amy has worked in many independent dance and theater projects and companies in NYC, Washington, DC, Seattle, San Diego and North Carolina, and with Laura Dean Dancers & Musicians, Bill Young/ Colleen Thomas Dancers. As a performer she garnered this review from the late Jack Anderson, writing in The New York Times – “Ms. Chavasse commanded the stage with the authority of a high priestess.” At the University of Michigan, she choreographs for opera and theater productions, works in multidisciplinary projects with students and faculty in Engineering, Performing Arts Technology, Art & Design, ArtsEngine and Theatre & Drama, and was a founding faculty member of the UARTS 250 course, Creative Process.
She launched a study abroad program in Seville, Spain with BFA Dance alum, Catherine Coury in 2019, with a re-launch, post pandemic in 2023. Since arriving at U-M in 2007, she has been committed to creating international opportunities and exchanges for her students and has hosted numerous international artists/ companies at the SMTD. She choreographs for opera productions and frequently collaborates with faculty from Music, Theatre & Drama and beyond. She is a faculty affiliate in Arts Initiative, the Center for Chinese Studies and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. She is a recipient of a SMTD Faculty Recognition award and the Arthur F. Thurnau Professorship. Prior to coming to U-M, she was a guest artist, artist-in-residence and/or Visiting faculty at Cornish College of the Arts, Arizona State University, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Bennington, Middlebury, UNC-Greensboro, George Washington among others.
BFA, University of North Carolina School of the Arts
MFA, University of Washington
From amy chavasse on Vimeo.
From amy chavasse on Vimeo.
From amy chavasse on Vimeo.