Noémie Lafrance is a Canadian choreographer living and working in New York City. She is the artistic director and founder of Sens Production, a not-for-profit arts organization that produces her site-specific work for public space and urban architecture. Born in Riviere-du-Loup, Quebec in 1973, Noemie Lafrance began her modern dance training at De-La Salle High School in Ottawa. She pursued professional training at Les Ateliers de Danse Moderne de Montreal from 1992 – 1994. In 1994, she moved to New York to attend the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance having received a scholarship (1994 - 1997). Ms. Lafrance also studied fashion design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York from 1998 – 1999.
Awards
Ms Lafrance was one of the inaugural recipients of Lambent Fellowship from the Tides Foundation and she was recently nominated for the Alpert Award. She won the 2008 Music Video Production Award for choreography of the Feist music Video, “1,2,3,4”. The video also received Le Prix Victoire de la Music in Paris in 2008, the CAD Awards in London in 2007 and was nominated for “Best Video” at the Grammy Awards in 2007. Lafrance’s work received two Bessie Award for the choreography and score of “Descent” in 2003. “Descent” was listed as one of the ten best performances of 2002 in The New York Times and Time Out New York. Ms. Lafrance was called “a site-specific wizard” in Dance Magazine’s “25 choreographers to watch” in 2004 and was listed in “The Best of 2006”. She was featured in Canada’s Readers Digest’s Selection in 2005, in the New York Times Magazine and in the TIME Magazine’s innovators section in 2006. Ms. Lafrance has also appeared on Radio Canada Television and Radio, NPR, Arts & Entertainment Channel, CBC News, BCATV and many others.
Works (Perfromance)
Her acclaimed piece “Descent” was performed in a twelve-story stairwell designed by legendary architect Stanford White in lower Manhattan. The performance ran more than 80 times to a total audience of over 5000 people in 2001, 2002 and 2003. “Noir”, a piece staged in a parking garage and viewed by the audience through the windshield of their cars was presented as a part of the Whitney Biennial and was co-produced by Danspace Project in 2004. Lafrance was commissioned by the Neuberger Museum of Art to create “Unseen: Landscapes”, a performance inspired by April Gornik’s paintings and performed by the MFA students at Purchase College SUNY in fall of 2004. Her work “Migrations”, was commissioned by the Whitney Museum at Altria, and was performed as part of the 2005 Performance on 42nd Street. “Agora”, followed by its second version, “Agora II”, were produced and presented by Sens Production in the abandoned McCarren Park Pool site in Brooklyn in 2005 and 2006. The performance reopened the abandoned site to the public for the first time in 20 years, was seen by more than 15,000 people and was performed more than 30 times. In 2008, Lafrance was commissioned to create “Rapture” using the architecture of the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College in the Hudson Valley, NY. Lafrance has since started a series of performances sponsored by Tiffany & Co. staging other Gehry designs worldwide. In 2009, she choreographed and performed a solo work called “Home” using her body as the site for the performance. Her work “Melt” originally created in 2003 in the Black and White Gallery’s courtyard in Brooklyn, features dancers covered in bee’s wax and lanolin performing on seats attached to a wall. Melt toured to the Festival TransAmerique, in Montreal, Mellemrum in Copenhagen and SESC in Sao Paolo, Brazil in 2008.
Works (Film)
Noémie Lafrance has worked on films, videos and TV commercials since 2007. The Feist video “1,2,3,4” which she choreographed was featured on the Apple Ipod Nano commercial and aired internationally. She recently choreographed the viral commercial “Daffy’s dance” for the clothing retailer Daffy’s and a “flash mob dance” for Bloomingdale’s. She has collaborated with director Patrick Daughters on several videos and commercials and with visual artist Doug Aitken on his film installation Sleepwalking, commissioned by MOMA in winter 2007. She has also worked with David Byrne on the choreography of his latest world tour launching his new album with Brian Eno.In September 2008. Ms Lafrance was commissioned to choreograph the Opera King Rogers and Ballet Harnasie for twelve dancers and fifty chorus singers directed by Lech Majeski in the summer of 2008 at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. Ms Lafrance made her debut as a film director with Rapture, a black and white short film featuring elements of her performance staging the architecture of Frank Gehry in 2008. She recently completed a short film, her first site-specific choreography only for the camera entitled “Eyes nose mouth”.
Funders
Noémie Lafrance's work was recognized and funded by the major public and private organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, The New York State Council for the Arts, the NYC Department of Cultural affairs, The Canada Council for the Arts, The Quebec Government House in New York, The Canadian Consulate General and Ministry of Cultural Affairs, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Rodney White Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, The Leon Levy Foundation, The Arnhold Foundation, The Altria Group, and many private supporters.
