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About

Life is an ongoing dance. Movement is in every cell. Dance happens in all encounters between humans, plants, objects and materials.  We constantly dance with others, exploring the familiarity and the strangeness of otherness.

Life is a dance within culture, between cultures, as we are constantly moving from place to place, from language to language, from a dance practice to another. Dance is an invitation for encounters beyond language. It is about exploration, transformation and communion.

Since my early childhood in Cameroon, my life has been about involving new communities. Always an outsider, trying to understand emic languages (spoken or in movement). This early anthropological eye moved me towards Anthropology and the practice of ethnography: in Tanzania, in Western Contemporary Dance, in Senegal.

I am working between Anthropology, Dance Studies, Contemporary Dance and Traditional African Dances, thinking out of a phenomenological experience. Practice and theory gather in one breath, and materialize in words on paper or performance.

Collaborations with Dance Companies

Contemporary Dance

Massimo Furlan, Nicole Seiler, deRothfils

Nina Stadler, IfSenz, Cie Cadmium

 

Afro-Contemporary

Cie Fodac, Cie Dogo Mussole

Cie Kunda - André Dramé

Sabar

Yama Wade, Aziz Bara Kara Niang

Guinean

Aissata Kouyaté

 

Dr. Claire Vionnet

claire.vion@gmail.com

Video on Youtube

In this video essay, I present my embodied engagement, demonstrating my way of using dance as a space for intimate ethnographic encounters. The footage display fieldwork performances in China, Tanzania, Montreal and India, as well as my past participation in dance projects in Switzerland. They are traces of my anthropological journey through space and movement.

Collaborations with Universities

Institute of Anthropology,                                   

University of Lausanne CH                                    2008-2010                                                                                                        

Institute of Anthropology                                  University of Aberdeen UK                      

2016-2017                                                                                                   

Dance Department                                            

University Paris 8                                                    2020-2022

 

Institute of Dance Studies 

University of Bern  

2013-2018

                                          Faculty of Fine Arts             University Concordia Montreal                                2019-2020

 

Swiss National Research Foundation

2013-2022

Claire_Montreal.JPG
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