Bessie-Awarded for Outstanding Choreography through contributions to Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
2023 Gallim Moving Artist Resident
2022 Jadin Wong Fellow
Advocacy leader for the queer Filipinx-American dance community
bio
Marie Lloyd Paspe (she/her) is a Filipina-American dance and vocal performer, choreographer, director, educator, bruha culture bearer, and writer based in lenapehoking/Brooklyn, NY. Marie is a performer with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company since 2018, Bessie awarded for Outstanding Choreography for contributions to the BTJ/AZ production of "Deep Blue Sea,” the 2022 Asian American Arts Alliance Jadin Wong Fellow, and a 2023 Gallim Moving Artist Resident.
Of Filipina descent, she was born in Singapore, grew up in Mississauga, Canada, migrated to Bellingham, MA in 2000, and received U.S. Citizenship in June 2019. She excavates diasporic identity work within bakla (Tagalog for “queer”) spaces of memory, fascia and time, igniting kapwa (“shared one-ness”) in collaborative processes and productions. Her work to re-root the small, brown, hypersexualized body through postmodern and pole dance forms exists within–yet juxtaposes–the eurocentric, the patrionormative, and the white-dominated space.
Marie’s choreography and performance has been presented internationally in Germany, occupied Palestine, the Philippines, and China; and nationally in NYC, North Adams, MA, LA, Philadelphia, Jersey City, and Minneapolis, among others. Recent features include film performance in Taikang Space (Beijing, China), artist-in-residence at TOPAZ Arts (Queens, NYC), choreographic director of treya lam’s residency at MASS MoCA and Joe’s Pub, and Creatives Rebuild New York grant recipient as artist and culture bearer. Her dance and vocal performance have been featured in The New York Times and Fjord Review.
artist statement
“My commitment to performance and choreography is a practice that elevates collaboration, representation, and archival embodiment. As a queer, brown, small, and sexualized Filipina-American, I revolt against systems of oppression through interdisciplinary performance, singing, storytelling, memory, movement spanning eurocentric techniques to pole dancing, education, and interpersonal humour and empathy. I have been investigating the fascial maps of how ancestry lives within the body and how this wealth of information, in collaboration with the external emotional and physical environments, can be tapped in the making and sharing of art.
The body of my work has been inspired by decades of experience of migration, family and lineage stories, dance training and performance, and working in injury-prevention and elder-focused spaces. I name the traditions of my mother; my 5 years as a featured dance performer and singer with Bill T. Jones and Janet Wong and the BTJ/AZ lineage; authors Leny Strobel, Denise Cruz, Audre Lorde, Bessel van der Kolk; body-based research of fascia, acupressure, pilates; and research on Philippines colonization (1521-1946) and its effects on the diaspora. These directly influence my being a conduit for kapwa (“shared one-ness”) and ancestral espiritu (“spirit”).”
teaching ethos
As an educator, Marie teaches fascial integration pilates, body mapping workshops, dance techniques, composition, and floorwork. As a Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company performer, she has taught masterclasses and workshops for the company in NYC and while on tour. As an artist interested in decolonizing spatial relations, she has taught her body mapping workshops at the Design for Social Innovation department at the School of Visual Arts, UGNAYAN virtual festival in the Philippines, and FAILSPACE in Brooklyn, NY. As a pilates instructor, she synthesizes her 24 years of dance, somatics, and rehabilitation training to offer strategic fascial alignment plans for her clientele of elders and athletes through her own business, MLP Pilates.
Please feel free to contact Marie via email or contact form, if interested in education, coaching, or mentorship opportunities.