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marie lynn haas

ABOUT ME

I am an improvisational mover and maker currently living in New Orleans, the ancestral home of the Chitimacha. My embodied and written research is situated at the crossroads of dance, science, autism, and healing. I approach my work as an interdisciplinary, transformational practice—one that weaves art-making with critical inquiry and attempts to engage creative problem-solving strategies across the arts and autism and also within a broader range of contexts and systems of knowledge.  As an improviser, I am drawn to practices that engage emergent frameworks. I initiate projects that are process-driven and seek collaborations that investigate how we come together and cultivate opportunities for co-creation. Whether I’m working with another dancer or an autistic child, my process draws on shared movement practices that help us embody empathy and bring us into partnership. During this time of continued social distancing, I have been developing a project that explores how we partner with the natural world and the spaces that we create, inhabit, and neglect across her terrain. This work is a ritual and a kind of ceremonial practice, a practice in witnessing the weight of waste, mourning abandonment, communing with the wild, and healing in the wake of decay. It centers empathy and reciprocity, and invites us to be in relationship with our more-than-human world as we continue to encounter the devastating effects of climate change and search for more sustainable forms of regeneration. I am also currently working with my ongoing collaborator Emily Climer on two virtual projects that explore how we collaborate and co-create from afar. 

photograph by Trevor Sones 

This introduction began as an exercise in drafting a biography and statement of purpose that would read less like an antiquated manifestation of a list of accomplishments and instead shed light on my interests and inquiries. However, it ended up being a much longer piece of writing than I anticipated. It has also served as the catalyst for revisiting some unfinished writing and for creating several new pieces, some of which can be found throughout the site. To read my full statement click here >>

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