Mark Tompkins

MARK TOMPKINS American dancer, choreographer, singer, and teacher founded the Company I.D.A. in 1983. Over time, his way of fabricating unidentified performance objects by mixing dance, music, song, text, and video has become his signature. Solos, group pieces, concerts, and improvised performances are elements of this journey initiated in the 70’s and with the complicity of set and costume designer Jean-Louis Badet since 1988. His passion for Real-time composition leads him to collaborate with dancers, musicians, light designers and video makers. Renowned for his teaching, he travels around the world. In 2008, he receives the SACD Choreography Prize for all his work (Society of Dramatic Authors Composers). Fascinated by the frictions and resonances between high and low entertainment, his performances are inspired by popular forms like cabaret, music-hall, musicals and burlesque and also themes of ambiguity and ambivalence. He also sings and dances in the concerts of Sarah Murcia & musicians, NEVER MIND THE FUTURE and MY MOTHER IS A FISH, collaborates with the Portuguese choreographer Mariana Tengner Barros in A POWER BALLAD and RESURRECTION. He recently published ONE SHOT dialogues on real-time composition, with Meg Stuart and the images of Gilles Toutevoix at Editions L’œil d’or. Most recent performances: the solo STAYIN ALIVE (2018) and the trio CELEBRATION (2021).