Marie Lloyd Paspe

Marie Lloyd Paspe (she/her) is a Filipina-American choreographer, dance artist, vocalist, and educator re-rooting the brown Asian body in the liberatory practice of kapwa. Her practice re-imagines forgotten memories that are sown into the genetic manuscripts of the body’s fascial maps. She is of Batangueña and Ilonggo lineage of Philippine islands Luzon and Panay. Marie was born in Singapore, grew up in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada and Boston, MA, and has lived in NYC in every borough since 2012. She is of Batangueña lineage from her mom’s side from Mataasnakahoy, Batangas, Philippines and of Ilonggo lineage from her dad’s home in Iloilo City, Iloilo, Panay.

Marie’s multi-faceted and dynamic choreographies, vocal scores, and performance-making merges the ancestral with the future, creating work that engages with the sociopolitical and ecologically impacted identities of the diasporic brown, queer, home-yearning body. She has been awarded the prestigious Harlem Stage WaterWorks Emerging Artist Fellowship (2024), Target Margin Theater Institute Fellowship (2023-24), GALLIM Moving Artist Residency (2023), Asian American Arts Alliance Jadin Wong Fellowship (2022), and TOPAZ Arts Artist Residencies (2022, 2025). She is a grant recipient of Creatives Rebuild New York Guaranteed Income for Artists (2022-24), Brooklyn Arts Council, Queens Council of the Arts, and Late Stage Stipend from Mertz Gilmore Foundation. She was a former performer with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company from 2018-2024, having received a Bessie for Outstanding Choreography for contributions to Deep Blue Sea (2021).

Her performance and collaborative work spans dance, vocal, and interdisciplinary forms. She has performed with Ching-I Chang, Sugar Vendil, Kyoko Takenaka, Faye Driscoll, Carolyn Dorfman, Tingying Ma, Martin Harriague, Eva Kolarova, Peter Chu, Peter Cheng, and other brilliant artists. She frequently bridges her embodied choreographic practice in live performance with interdisciplinary musicians treya lam, Kyoko Takenaka, Sirintip, and Dan Gorelick. Her performance work in film has been featured in Taikang Space in Beijing, China, MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA, UGNAYAN Festival based in Manila, Philippines, and Joe’s Pub in NYC, and in music videos by OHYUNG, AERI, and treya lam. 

Marie’s choreographic works have been presented at Harlem Stage, MASS MoCA, Lincoln Center, Movement Research at Judson Church, Joe’s Pub, Green Space, Chelsea Factory, Ailey CitiGroup Theater, Arts on Site, Target Margin Theater, TOPAZ Arts, Queensboro Dance Festival, Bethany Arts Community, Smush Gallery, and Reeds Arboretum. Internationally, her work has been presented at SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin and UGNAYAN virtual Philippines festival. In June 2025 she will be conducting immersive research in Siquijor, Philippines and presenting her solo work sunod at Fete de la Musique PH Siquijor.

Workshop Description: KWENTUHAN

Creative Process workshops with Marie take place Thursday, August 14 and Friday, August 15 1-4pm in the Ark

Kwentuhan is Tagalog for "conversation" — the sharing of mga kwento or stories between people. In this workshop, we ask ourselves:

what does it mean to re-member and examine stories in our bodies?  Using movement, vocals, sound-making, world building, and site, participants will unravel collective and ancestral stories from the depths of their fascia, bone, and memory. We will engage in rigorous dance phrase-work, partnering explorations, sounding expressions, and vocal exercises as foundations for interdisciplinary creation — deconstructing what it means to be colonized bodies moving with and amongst these sacred lands and waters nearing ecological collapse. What we learn/un-learn and co-create together will commune in a ritual that allows for each person to share their own kwento-kwento in the ways that they are called. Come.