Marie France Forcier

Biography

Marie France Forcier (she/her) is a Canadian artist. Through her experiential lens as a trained dancer, she researches at the intersection of somatic practice, trauma studies and choreography. Originally from Montreal and maintaining regular collaborative relationships within the Toronto community, Forcier has been Associate Professor of Dance at the University of Calgary’s School of Creative and Performing Arts since 2015, where she currently acts as the Dance Division’s Performance Lead.   

Following the completion of post-secondary degrees in Social Science and Dance in her native Québec, Forcier received conservatory training from the School of Toronto Dance Theatre, earned a Masters of Fine Arts in choreography from York University, and has been pursuing a PhD in Art and Design at Liverpool John Moores University via the Creative Practice program of the TransArt Institute, for which she is a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada doctoral fellow. Her doctoral work, under publication, yielded Constructive Expressive Inhabiting, a method rooted in somatic practice to generate creative material from embodied trauma. 

For over two decades, her body of work has been presented on platforms spanning urban sites to dance-dedicated proscenium theatres to galleries spaces across North America, Europe and Asia. In collaborative capacities, she has performed live and within the digital realm in disciplines ranging from dance theatre to contemporary dance, to performance art to aerial circus, touring extensively around the world. Current ongoing collaborative relationships include work with Anandam DanceTheatre/ Brandy Leary (Canada), W&M Physical Theatre (Canada/Poland), and Heidi Strauss (Canada) and He Jin Jang (South Korea/ Singapore) through their triangular exchange collective InBetween Space Lab.   

Her numerous trade articles can be found in the Dance Current, including the widely circulated and ripple-causing Code of Silence, a testimonies-substantiated call to action to address abuse in dance communities published prior to the #metoo movement. Her academic writing includes chapter contributions to Literature and Psychology: Writing, Trauma and the Self (Ed. Önder Çakirtas, 2019), What Happened, Re-presenting trauma, Uncovering Recoveries Eds. Elspeth McInnes and Danielle Schaub), and Topography of Trauma: Fissures, Disruptions and Transfigurations (Eds. Danielle Schaub et al.), and journal articles for Taylor and Francis publications Fat Studies and Dance Chronicles.  

Her research and creative work has been supported over the years by the Canada’s Social Science and Humanities Research Council, the Canada Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Toronto Arts Council, and Calgary Arts Development. She routinely serves on local, national and international committees and public funding juries, was the Chair of the Dance Service Organization Dancers Studio West (Canada) from 2018-2021, and the co-Artistic director of Toronto’s research hub Hub 14 (2013-15). 

Forcier lives and raises her children at the intersection of her French Canadian heritage and the Anglo-dominant culture within which they live on the traditional territories of the people of Treaty 7.