Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Faustine Lavie. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Faustine, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

All the projects that I do are meaningful to me, but I believe the most meaningful one was starting my own dance collective and choreograph my own pieces. It’s an adventure that started during the pandemic and allow me to really find my own voice and style in dance. I love exploring different aspects of choreographing, while also putting strong meanings behind movements. I want to touch or shock people, make them think about subjects very important in our society, such as our individuality, the place of women, etc. I want the audience to feel something when they watch my work, that is what I love so much about creating art.

Faustine, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a French professional dancer and choreographer based in NYC. I was born in Toulon, on the French Riviera, and I started dancing at only 3 years old. I then moved to Paris and finally NYC in 2015 to attend the Ailey School. I graduated from the Certificate Program there in 2018, and started dancing professionally for various companies, individual choreographers and artists. I am currently dancing for a few companies such as iKADA Contemporary Dance Company, LaneCoArts and sarAika, among others. I also work a lot with visual artist Reza Farkhondeh on projects that are very different from working with dance professionals. And I also founded Faustine Lavie Dance Project in 2020, which is I believe my boldest project. It’s really hard to conciliate both dancing for so many people and also leading my own group of dancers, but I’m very proud to say that they perform a one hour show choreographed entirely by myself for the first time on October 14th. It was a big step for me as choreographer and I had a lot of very positive comments from everyone that attended about my work, which gives me hope that this project will get bigger and bigger. I’m also very proud of where I am today as a dancer and artist, because it wasn’t always easy, especially in my teenage years. I had lots of doubts and struggles, and I’m very proud to have overcome them to be where I am today.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

For me, it’s definitely touching people and giving them emotions. I love creating my dance pieces, but seeing them on stage and hearing people telling me how they felt watching them is the most rewarding aspect for me of creating art. Not everyone like everything, and as an artist, there are always people that won’t like your work or your style, but as long as they feel something, I succeeded in my work. My latest choreography called “Banned” was inspired by the latest events regarding the right to abortion in the US and denunciate our patriarchal society and the inequalities between men and women. Some people in the audience told me they felt uncomfortable watching some part, but in a good way, and that’s exactly what I wanted. I don’t want to make pretty movement, I want to make movement that can help changing the world.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

It was when I was a teenager. I started dance with ballet, and only ballet, for years. When I reached puberty, my body started to change and I was told I could never have a career in ballet unless I would do drastic things to reach a body goal that was extremely unnatural for me and unhealthy. I had to transition to contemporary dance, which is a world more open minded about body types. It wasn’t a choice of mine to do it, it felt like it was either that or stop dancing completely. Or at least not professionally. At first I hated it, but now, I am so grateful that I had to transition because I feel much happier than I used to and I finally really know why I am dancing: to express myself, and not just to look pretty. I feel more connected to my own body as well, and know how to use it better in many different ways. So I just want to say that sometimes, forced transition are not bad, it might actually have happened this way because it was where I was destined to go.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.faustinelavie.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/faustinelavie/?hl=fr

Image Credits
Paul DuBois, Nir Arieli, Deto Ahn, John A. Fleming and Deborah Lotti