Dance@Bennington presents a Performance of New Work by DD Dorvillier, "Dance is the archeologist, or an idol in the bone."

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Returning to perform in the US for the first time in several years, DD Dorvillier engages with her rich history as part of the downtown New York dance and performance scene throughout the 90s and 2000s. A French transplant since 2010, Dorvillier’s latest solo—a collaboration with sound artist Sébastien Roux—is structured by four consecutive dance scores, which emerged from a dream after dance practices and research on a handful of little-known archeological sites in France. Dorvillier dances, digging through the series of scores, and upon reaching the end, begins again. The sound recorded from her first round of dances returns to accompany the second—a sonic ghost conjugating the present with the immediate past, as she moves towards the future.

DD Dorvillier San Juan, Puerto Rico 1967. After receiving a BA in Dance in 1989 from Bennington College, Dorvillier created performances in and for New York City until 2004, then began developing projects elsewhere, settling in France in 2010. Her work has been shown in New York at The Kitchen, New York Live Arts, Danspace Project, and Performance Space 122, among many other NY venues, and in countless theaters and situations internationally.

Dorvillier's artistic practice balances between the exploration of the sensitive body and more conceptual approaches to composing and improvising. She seeks to encourage autonomy in the reception and transmission of her work. The relationship with sound, light, and objects, as almost linguistic materials, is often a driving force. Currently, how and where to dance, and how and why to preserve dance—how these conditions influence each other—are key questions in her research.

In 2020, with composer Sébastien Roux, she inaugurated La Corvette, a multidisciplinary research and creation space in Côte d'Or, Burgundy. Since 2021, she has been working with numerous collaborators on Untitled landscapes, an extended research and creation project. From this project have emerged Les yeux du menuisier (2022), Landscape Stories (2023-2024), and Dance is the archeologist, or an idol in the bone (2024).