BIOGRAPHY
EDUCATION AND INFLUENCES:
Daria Faïn is a New York choreographer and director originally from the Mediterranean. Her work fuses her European cultural background with three decades of practice in Asian philosophies of the body, American dance training and theater. From this diverse background, Faïn has developed a unique movement and performance approach. She studied the classical Indian dance form Bharatha Natyam for five years in Paris with Amala Devi and in Madras, India with Swarnamuckie (State dancer of Tamil Nadu, 1982). In India she also studied the co-relationship between this classical form of dance and temple architecture. Additionally, she was deeply influenced by her work with the Butoh-based artist Min Tanaka. With a grant from the French Ministry of Culture, she studied at the Graham School in NYC from 1984 to 1986. She has been certified in the Alexander Technique since 1991, and has been an instructor of the Universal Healing Tao (Mantak Chia Chinese Taoist University) since 2001 and studied Martial Arts with Master Allen Frank from 2007-2010. Faïn has extensively researched the reciprocal influence between architecture and human behavior, and has given lectures on Swiss-born architect and urbanist Le Corbusier. Faïn has also studied theater in France with the Roy Hart Theater and the Peter Brook Company. She has conducted extensive research on ancient Greek Theater. Over the years, Faïn’s choreographic research has led her to work with people with mental illness, the developmentally disabled, and deaf-blind individuals, leading to a complex understanding of the body as a endless resource of knowledge.
In 2006, working collaboratively with poet/architect Robert Kocik, Faïn created the Prosodic Body, a new field of research on the embodiment of language that manifests in performance, education, architecture and writing. In 2008 they founded the performing group The Commons Choir, a core and variable cast of roughly 30 singers, actors, composers and people with which they create highly socially charged performances. In 2017 they incorporated as the Prosodic Body LLC to create an umbrella for all their activities.
SELECTED PERFORMANCES:
Over the course of her career Faïn has presented seventeen evening-length performances and numerous other short works, installations, durational pieces and improvisations. She founded, designed, and built the multidisciplinary arts center and performance space Atelier Trigon with architect/poet Robert Kocik in Paris in 1990, and served as its Artistic Director from 1990-1994.
In New York, Faïn's work has been presented and commissioned by: the Chocolate Factory (2019-21), BRIC Arts | Media House (AIR 2015-2017), Gibney Dance (2014), The Poet's House and River to River Festival (2014), New York Live Arts (2013), Dance New Amsterdam (2012), Dance Theater Workshop (2011), Danspace Project (2006, 2008, 2010), The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2008, 2010, 2014), The Kitchen (1996, 2004), Movement Research (1996, 2001, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010), The Rubin Museum (2008) and The 92nd Street Y (2001). In France, Faïn’s work has been commissioned by Marseille Objectif Danse (Marseille, 2001–2004), the Fondation Cartier (Paris, 1996) and the Ecole de Beaux Arts (Paris, 1996).
RESIDENCIES:
Between 2018-2020, her current project Patch The Sky With 5 Colored Stones a.k.a. Landing Sites, was awarded of a 6 month residency at Brooklyn Studios for Dance (2018-2019), A Saari Residency in Finland financed by the Kone Foundation, Movement Research (MR) with a 2019 MR Residency, funded by the Scherman Foundation’s Katharine S. and Axel G. Rosin Fund and by the GPS/Global Practice Sharing program of Movement Research for a cultural exchange with Zagreb Dance Center funded by the Trust for Mutual Understanding.
For mayday heyday parfait byThe Commons Choir / Faïn & Kocik were Artists-In-Residence at BRIC Arts Media from 2015 to 2017. This project was also supported withExploring the Metropolis Choreographer + Composer residency in 2017.. in 2017-2018 The Commons Choir / Faïn & Kocik were a recipient of the Gibney DiP Artist In Residence in 2018. Between 2008-2009 Faïn and Kocik received a 6 month residency at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council for a research of the the social concept of ‘the commons’ as a contemporary practice. In 2015 Faïn was an alumni of the Watermill Center for a research residency project on climate change that gather environmentalists, artists, architects, somatic practitioner and sociologists from the US and Finland. In 2010 The Commons Choir / Faïn & Kocik was in residency at the Lower Manhattan Cultural council at Governors Island where they performed for the opening of the facilities. Faïn was Movement Research Artist In Residence 2008-2010.
GOVERNMENT and PRIVATE FOUNDATION SUPPORT:
patch the sky with 5 colored stones received support from the Austrian Cultural Forum NYC, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, Kone Foundation, Movement Research (MR) with a 2019 MR Residency, funded by the Scherman Foundation’s Katharine S. and Axel G. Rosin Fund and by the GPS/Global Practice Sharing program of MR with funding from the Trust for Mutual Understanding, and New York State Council on the Arts.
From 2015-2017, for mayday heyday parfait, Faïn was recipient of grant for the New Music USA, New York State Council of the Arts, the HipUP Foundation (Belgium). For E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E, a piece commissioned by New York Live Arts 2012-13 her company, The Commons Choir, received funding from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts: BUILD Grant and the James E. Robison Foundation. In 2008 her Projects: THE EXTENT TO WHICH, THE PERINEUM: An Anechoic Darkroom, and The Commons Choir received funding from: Hip Up Foundation (Belgium), American Music Center: Live Music for Dance, New York State Cultural Affairs, James E Robison Foundation and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Ms. She has also received a grant from the New York State Cultural Affairs (1994, 2008). She has been awarded numerous grants from the French Ministry of Culture (1984, 1986, 1994).
AWARDS and FELLOWSHIPS:
Faïn and her partner poet Robert Kocik (co-founder of The Commons Choir) received the 2016 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. Faïn was a 2015 Doris Duke Impact Nominee. In France, she received a special fellowship from the French Ministry of Urbanism’s Architecture Research Section 1986 for a research on the body in Le corbusier’s architecture. As a young dancer Faïn received a scholarship for the French Cultural Ministry to study in New York at the Martha Graham School. 1979, Faïn received the Cultural Ministry Award from the Concours Internationale de Choregraphie de Bagnolet.
TEACHING:
In the U.S., Faïn has been a faculty member at Movement Research since 2005, and she has taught master classes and workshops at institutions across the United States, including The New School (2015), Harvard University (2011), Trisha Brown Studio (2008), New York University (1999, 2001, 2010, 2015), Tulane University (1998), Adelphi University, Rutgers University (2010), Cooper Union (1986), and Sarah Lawrence College (2009). Faïn has also taught Internationally at Independent Dance in London (2017-2018) and Tanzfabrik in Berlin (2017-2018).
Faïn has developed her independent teaching practice since 2000 and has trained many professional dancers and choreographers. She now runs her own certification program in New York.
WRITING:
Her writing has frequently been published in the Movement Research Performance Journal.