Marie Osterman
Creator, Facilitator, & Invigorator
Marie has been in love with contact improvisation since she was 15, when she first was lucky enough to study with Anya Cloud in San Diego. Since then, she has studied contact with masters all over the world, from Tbilisi to Freiburg to her current home, Los Angeles. Contact Improv helped Marie discover her greatest passion: devising ensemble performances through movement and dance. She has worked as a movement director/advisor for various productions in the Hollywood Fringe, UCLA, the Odyssey Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, and Project Nongenue.While specializing in working with ages 11-18, Marie teaches adult classes or ensemble groups through private or community workshop. Marie has taught movement (with a focus in contact improvisation and liberated movement) to youth groups ages 6-19 at the La Jolla Playhouse, Santa Monica Dance Home, Canyon Crest Academy, and various youth dance studios in San Diego. They are also currently working with Project Nongenue to develop an outreach program geared towards empowering young girls through empowered theatremaking.
Please contact for any rate/class inquiries!
Marie has built their movement teaching practice around movers of all ages and experiences, believing that movement is not just useful for theatremaking and creativity, but vital to every aspect of the developing mind and body. Their classes are made to be accessible to all bodies, ages, and experiences, meeting the participants where they’re at and empowering them to listen to their body’s individual goals. While they have worked with all ages and level of professional, Marie is most passionate about teaching young artists, specializing in ages 11-18. Marie helps students discover and cultivate their own movement practice through introducing them to a combination of embodied, process-oriented practices such as contact improvisation, movement liberation, viewpoints, and devised theatre. In the immediacy and freedom of improvised work, it can bring attention to our personal narratives and internal obstacles that we may face in our daily lives. This kind of brave space can invite more creative solutions and truthful observations about our relationships to ourselves, others and our environment. Through building ensemble, liberating our own movements, and sharing the dance, Marie aims to cultivate a container where students may arrive to take on these obstacles in an embodied context, and emerge with openness, connection and a more grounded creative power.
