Collectif de danse contemporaine
WOMAN'S MOVE
Contemporary Dance Company
Elsa Couvreur
At fifteen years old, Elsa enters the Royal Ballet School of Antwerp from which she graduates three years later with a Diplôme d’Enseignement Secondaire Artistique.
She is then admitted into the Junior Ballet of Geneva, run by Patrice Delay and Sean Wood, where she pursues her education for three years as well. She has the opportunity to perform the works of several choreographers including Thierry Malandain, Stijn Celis, Ken Ossola, Gilles Jobin, Guillherme Botelho, Ioannis Mandafounis.
She then gets into the creation of her first choreographic work, ‘To Make Myself Clear’, which is first performed in March 2012 as part of the Quarts D’Heure at the Théâtre Sévélin 36, then performed a second time in June 2012 as part of the Fête de la Musique in Geneva.
In October 2012, she co-founds the association Woman’s Move in collaboration with Iona D’Annunzio and Margaux Monetti.
She has signed the solo "J'ai essayé de ne pas tomber" (I tried not to fall), created for the young choreographers platform InciDanse 2013, as well as the performance "Even Raël Would Agree", a 7 dancers work created for Festival Electron 2014 performed for two years in multiple swiss cities.
In parallel, she also performs for the dance companies Alias (Guilherme Botelho), Inkörper Company (Aurélien Dougé) and Yann Marussich.
In 2016, she collaborates with the theatre company AGP as part as their work "Le Salon des Confidences".
In 2017, she creates the works ‘The Sensemaker’ and ‘Drop the Gogo’ for Woman’s Move.
Iona D'Annunzio
Co-founder and choreographer of Woman’s Move, Iona has created and co-created several choreographic pieces. Gender is at the center of her creative work. The movement and creative process explores the social imaginaries that constitute our daily environment. She thus invites the public to subtly reflect on the world and on their self. Her artistic research is particularly nourished by the studies she follows in sociology and gender studies at the University of Geneva, in parallel with her artistic career. She has won two academic prizes for her Bachelor’s research project : “Best sociology Bachelor” and the ”Gender Prize” of University of Geneva in 2019.
She first trained at the École Supérieure Nationale de Danse Rosella Hightower, before studying at the junior ballet of Geneva from 2008 to 2010. As a performer, Iona has worked for Nagan Production (Brice Kapel), Danceflowing Company (Anne- Sophie Fenner), the Lausanne Opera (Barry Collins), En Cie d’Eux (Natacha Garçin), Puszta Company (Julia Medugno) and Compagnie Sam Hester (Perrine Valli).
In addition to her career as an performer, she teaches Hip Hop dance at the Collège du Léman and animates Family Dance Workshops in the Geneva region. Iona is also the assistant choreographer of Perrine Valli on her latest creation for young audiences Cloud, which features around 20 children alongside professional artists.
It was during the Festival Antigel that she created her first piece in 2015: Me and My Princess. In 2018, she choreographed two in-situ performances at the University of Geneva: L'onde and Gender Cubicles. The choreographer is currently working on her next creation 99-Gender which will be presented at Théâtre de l'Étincelle from 17th to the 20th of march 2021.