Daria Faïn is a New York choreographer and director originally from the Mediterranean. Her work fuses her European cultural background with three decades of practice in Asian philosophies of the body, American dance training, and theater. Faïn has developed a unique movement and performance approach from this diverse background. She studied the classical Indian dance form Bharatha Natyam for five years in Paris with Amala Devi and in Madras, India, with Swarnamuckie (State dancer of Tamil Nadu, 1982). In India she also studied the co-relationship between this classical form of dance and temple architecture. Additionally, she was deeply influenced by her work with the Butoh-based artist Min Tanaka. She studied at the Graham School in NYC from 1984 to 1986 with a grant from the French Ministry of Culture. She has been an instructor of the Universal Healing Tao (Mantak Chia Chinese Taoist University) since 2001 and studied martial arts with Master Allen Frank from 2007-2010. Faïn has extensively researched the reciprocal influence between architecture and human behavior and has given lectures on Swissborn architect and urbanist Le Corbusier. Faïn has also studied theater in France with the Roy Hart Theater and the Peter Brook Company. She has conducted extensive research on ancient Greek Theater. Over the years, Faïn’s choreographic research has led her to work with people with mental illness, the developmentally disabled, and deafblind individuals, leading to a complex understanding of the body as an endless resource of knowledge. In 2006, working collaboratively with poet/architect Robert Kocik, Faïn created the Prosodic Body, a new field of research on the embodiment of language that manifests in performance, education, architecture, and writing. In 2008, they founded the performing group The Commons Choir, a core and variable cast of roughly 30 singers, actors, composers, and people with whom they create highly socially charged performances. In 2017, they incorporated the Prosodic Body LLC, as an umbrella for all their activities. U.S. governmental Institutions and private foundations have funded Faín’s work. She has performed and taught internationally in Mexico, France, Germany, Croatia, and the United Kingdom.
