Grace E. Courvoisier

Grace Courvoisier, a native of Las Vegas, NV, is a Swiss-French and American performance maker and choreographer based in New York City and Los Angeles. Upon studying Graham, Horton, and Composition at the Las Vegas Academy of International Studies & Performing Arts High School, she also studied Vaganova technique with Nevada Ballet Theatre under the artistic direction of Bruce Steivel, for which she received the Nancy Houssel Scholarship. She went on to receive her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. She has had the opportunity to work with/perform the works of renowned choreographers including Tere O’Connor, Kirstie Simpson, Laurie Carlos, Catherine Cabeen, Rebecca Nettl-Fiol, and Linda Lehovec. Grace was also selected to perform in the reconstruction of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company’s D-Man In The Waters (National Endowment for the Arts) in 2008. She created a number of works during her undergraduate, including Sister Republic, which was invited for inclusion in the American College Dance Festival, and went on to be performed in Chen Dance Center's New Steps Choreographer's Series in NYC 2011. Her most recent work, Mountain Dew Honey Spring, was part of the Beverly Blossom/Carey Erickson Alumni Awardee for a residency at the University of Illinois which was performed at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in February 2018.

 Grace Courvoisier and Dance Collective (GC&DC) was founded in September 2012. The Collective believes the physicality of a body can house historical and emotional landscapes. The work is rooted in how the human body holds memories and trauma through time. Often coming from a consciously led feminist space, GC&DC continually finds memories of origin for which romanticism, ritual, and repetition play a large part in the choreographic practice. Theatrical and immersive in nature, GC&DC uses spoken word, song, and language as a burrowing technique to find movement specifically subjective to the physical self. The work is often subject to the addition of both manmade and natural tangible elements including but not limited to water, milk, coal, leaves, latex, wood, and other everyday props to enhance the movement process and audience spectacle. Ingrained in a sense of comedic delight, GC&DC aims to combine the hustle of technique with the splendor of theater. The Collective’s NYC works have been performed for The Current Sessions at The Wild Project, CRAWL, The Invisible Dog Art Center, Bunker Dance, Symphony Space, Movement Research, Judson Church, The Secret Theater, and Issue Project Room.

In her spare time, she can be caught at various museum exhibitions, reading Victorian British Literature, practicing/writing anagrams, hovered over a DIY project, and saving the world one sequin at a time.