- Czech republic
- Choreographer
"Maguy Marin studied classical dance at the Conservatoire in Toulouse. She then joined the Ballet de Strasbourg, before changing direction and signing up to the École Mudra when it first launched in Brussels in 1970. The ensuing three years of intensive work had a decisive impact on her career (“all of my certainties melted away, revealing the sheer multitude of creative choices, the freedom and the constraints involved… Things would never be the same again”).
She subsequently spent four years as a soloist with the Ballet du XXème siècle, directed by Maurice Béjart, while taking her first steps in the realm of choreography. In 1978 she returned to Brussels to work with Daniel Ambash; around this time her profile began to rise considerably, not least after winning a prize at the International Choreography Challenge held in Bagnolet in 1978. Her style gradually evolved into a French counterpart to Tanztheater, developed in Germany by Pina Bausch, as she began to incorporate various theatrical and non-dance elements into her choreographic creations. She was soon regarded as one of the most important choreographers of the “nouvelle danse française“ movement, thanks in no small part to the success of her legendary piece May B, which premiered in 1981 at the National Centre for Contemporary Dance in Angers, followed by her modern reworking of Cindarella at Lyon Opera House in 1985, which has since been performed over 460 times with ten different casts. 1987 saw the beginning of a long collaboration with musician and composer Denis Mariotte. After spells as the director of the Centre chorégraphique national de Créteil et du Val-de-Marne from 1985 onwards, and later of the Centre chorégraphique national de Rillieux-la-Pape from 1998 to 2011, she moved to Toulouse in 2012, then to Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon in 2015.
Her company has continued to change and evolve over the years, recently focusing more on her work outside the milieu of dance.
Maguy Marin is one of the very few non-Americans to have won an American Dance Festival Award. In 2008 she received a Bessie Award in New York for her show Unwelt, performed at the city’s Joyce Theater. The 2012 edition of the Festival d'automne in Paris featured a retrospective of her work, with 6 of her most emblematic creations performed in eight theatres across Paris and the Île-de-France region. In June 2016 the Venice Biennale awarded her a Golden Lion in recognition of her artistic career.
She was recently the subject of a documentary, directed by her son David Mambouch and released in 2019."
