Choreographer and dance artist, Marie-Louise Crawley trained with Marcel Marceau in Paris and then joined Ariane Mnouchkine's Théâtre du Soleil as an actor for seven years. In the UK she has worked with the Birmingham Opera Company, Marc Brew, Gary Clarke, Ballet Cymru, Rosie Kay Dance Company, and Avid for Ovid. Her recent choreography includes pieces for the Tate/ARTIST ROOMS Robert Therrien exhibition and a performance installation, The Forest. She lectures in Choreography and Performance at the University of Worcester, and completed a PhD at Coventry University's Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE).
Marie-Louise was APGRD Artist in Residence for six months from January to June 2017. During her residency, Marie-Louise developed a site-specific dance piece, Likely Terpsichore? (Fragments), in the gallery spaces of the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology.
Based on four female figures from Ovid’s Metamorphoses - Galatea, Myrrha, Philomel and Medusa - Likely Terpischore? (Fragments) takes as its formal starting point the foundational principles of ancient pantomime - a solo, masked and narrative dance form. But within Crawley’s choreographic practice the ancient sources are ‘re-imagined’ in order to find new possibilities for twenty-first century performance. She has performed the piece on numerous occasions in the Museum.
