Mark Tompkins

The show will take place after the screening of Anna Halprin, Dancing Life/Danser la vie, production Contredanse - Baptiste Andrien and Florence Corin, with Anna Halprin

In 1992, Mark Tompkins created WITNESS in Vienna as an homage to American dancer and choreographer Harry Sheppard, who worked in Paris and NYC with Andy De Groat, Yoshiko Chuma and Mark Tompkins back when he started out in Paris.
WITNESS combines dance, singing, spoken text and extreme physical performance in a piece filled with joyful and sharp irony. The artist’s generous and controversial delight in dressing up progressively leads the piece towards an allegory of the violence of the disappearance of the other and the fragility of being human. An exceptional performer, Mark Tompkins moves from one body to another in a game of simulacre and metamorphosis, from one soul to another, agile as a shape-shifter, and establishes the stage as an ecstatic place and dance as an erotic force.

Mark Tompkins is a dancer, choreographer, singer and American pedagogue who founded the I.D.A. company in 1983. His unique way of making unidentified performative objects, combining dance, music, singing, spoken text and video, has become his signature style. A brilliant pedagogue, his passion for composition in real time led him to collaborate with many international improv artists. Fascinated by the confrontation between high and low culture, Tompkins draws inspiration from music-hall, burlesque, musicals, and notions of simulacre and gender ambivalence. In 2008, he was awarded the Prix de la Chorégraphie SACD for his work; his most recent pieces include the solo STAYIN ALIVE à ma mère in 2018 and the musical trio CELEBRATION with cellist Maxime Dupuis and vibraphonist Tom Gareil in 2021, a collaboration with Portuguese choreographer Mariana Tengner in which he sang and danced, and other collaborations, with composer Sarah Murcia and choreographer Meg Stuart, whom he’s been working with since 2016 on a project of improvised performances and a book with images by Gilles Toutevoix - ONE SHOT dialogues sur la composition en temps réel, which was published in the Spring of 2022 with Editions l’œil d’or.