Ann Lenore Moradian (Artistic Director, Perspectives In Motion) is a movement artist, educator, writer and advocate for systemic health and healthy ecologies: human, social, cultural and environmental. As a dancer and choreographer, she performed with companies including Anna Sokolow’s Player’s Project, Manuel Alum Dance Company, Impulse Theatre & Dance, Colorado State Ballet, and Perspectives In Motion, which she founded in New York City in 1988. With over 40 years of movement experience ranging from classical to contemporary dance, from yoga to the martial arts, her current work focuses primarily on collaborative, interdisciplinary and semi-devised creative and educational projects.
Raised in Colorado, Ann has lived in New York City, Delhi, Chennai and, currently, lives in Paris. She graduated magna cum laude from NYU’s Gallatin Division with a BA in Art & Society, holds certificates in Systems Thinking with Fritjof Capra, Social Design with the Gaia Foundation, Yoga (200hr ERYT), therapeutic yoga for healthy lower backs, and a diplôme universitaire from the Université de Lille in Danse Improvisation & Creativité. She received an MA in Dance Education from the University of Northern Colorado, where her thesis research, Missing in Action: Locating the Body in Interdisciplinary Studies, explored interdisciplinary perspectives on the moving body and what kind of knowledge and know-how we might acquire through movement-based practice.
Ann has presented at numerous conferences, including BODY IQ in Berlin (2021), SomaFest in Prague (2021), Movement: Brain, Body, Cognition in Paris (2021), Dancing-Moving-Knowing at the Centre for Ideas & Imagination/Columbia Global Centre in Paris, The Embodiment Conference, Liveable Futures, East-West Somatics, Natya Kala Conference on Choreography in Chennai, The Conscious Body IV in France, Women in Systems Thinking for the International Society for the Systems Sciences, and World Dance Alliance gatherings at Centre national de la danse contemporaine (France), Dance Theatre Workshop/New York University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Upcoming conference-presentations include Mindful Movement: Human Ecologies and Conscious Evolution for the Body-Mind Centering Assocation 2023 conference.
Ann has written dance research articles published in the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practice, the Journal of Performance and Mindfulness, choreograph.net, and co-authored a chapter, “ChildhoodNature in Motion: The Ground for Learning,” with Martha Eddy for Springer’s International Handbook on Childhood and Nature Education (2018). She continues to research, write and present on dance, creativity, systemic health, human and cultural ecologies, and the evolving mind, body, heart and soul of humankind. She serves as French correspondent, writing dance reviews for New York’s The Dance Enthusiast, and was voted Best Yoga in Paris in 2016 by Expatriate Magazine.
Ann teaches yoga and dance-based practices privately and for a number of institutions in Paris, including ICM (Paris Brain Institute) at Hopital Pitié-Salpetrière, the Centre national du cinéma, and New York University-Paris. She conducts classes, workshops and retreats, and particularly enjoys sharing life skills for young adults and teenagers with her two yoga-based programs, Navigating Complexity® and Yoga Survival Tools for Teenagers®.
Dance Lineage:
Ann began performing at the age of 8. Her first performances were with Mattie Springfield, Gwendolyn Ashbaugh’s Palimpsest, Denver Civic Ballet, Colorado State Ballet and Opera Fair. She moved to New York City in 1981, where she studied ballet with Finis Jhung and David Howard, Horton technique with Milton Myers, Taylor technique with Susan McGuire and Ken Tosti, Limon technique with Colin Connor and Risa Steinberg, Humphrey-Limon & Sokolow techniques with Jim May, and improvisation-based movement with Margie Gillis. As noted above, she danced with a number of companies, including Anna Sokolow’s Players’ Project, the Manuel Alum Dance Company, Impulse Theatre and Dance, and Perspectives In Motion.
Jim May, who she considers an artistic mentor, wrote that Ann has “a deep respect for dance tradition and at the same time delves courageously into the experimental… I would be willing to wager that she, like Goethe, continues to exclaim ‘More light!’“
Ann began studying yoga in 1982 with Eric Beeler and first began sharing this practice with her dancers in 1991 to help them gain deeper awareness, refined articulation, unwavering focus, and greater control, flexibility and ease, though most importantly she used this work to help them to integrate mind-body-heart-and-soul and bring this to their performance. As noted above, Ann is a 200hr ERYT Yoga Alliance certified yoga instructor and also a specialist in Yoga for Healthy Lower Backs (300hr). Her first introduction to the martial arts was in 1994 in New York with Aikido master, Henry Smith. Her studies in the martial arts include Tai Chi (wu style) and Chi Gong with Maria Abrahams, Aikido/Kinomichi with Masamachi Noro, Nguyen Thahn Thien, Lucien Forni and Catherine Auffret, and Kenjutsu, Niten (two-swords) and Jo (stick work) with Nguyen Thahn Thien. She has taught dance, yoga, partnering, performance, movement and improvisation throughout the US and internationally, including in Belgium, England, India, Ireland, France, Scotland, and Switzerland. She particularly enjoys working with performers on composition, production, interdisciplinary collaborations and deepening their performance.
Additionally, Ann has worked in film in a number of capacities, including choreographer, dancer, actress and cameraperson. In 2006, she and visual artist Nannette Bertschy began a collaborative exploration which led to a large body of figurative photography, and a number of experimental movement videos. In 2009 Nannette joined Ann in developing the conceptualisation and visuals for The Medusa Project, a multi-disciplinary performance work re-telling the myth of Medusa. This fascinating and funny large scale, semi-devised work has been presented in-progress in Paris 2012 and 2013 at venues including the Bilingual Acting Workshop, the Centre nationale de la danse and L’Art au Garage. Additional collaborations with photographer Alex Vanagas and actor Colum Morgan have resulted in wonderful learning processes for all concerned, as well as photography, videography and live performance works.
Perspectives in motion 