Artist

David Marchant
(Washington University & ZO Motion Arts)
is a Senior Lecturer, on the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis since 1994, specializing in aesthetic theory, technique, composition and improvisation in the concert art of contemporary dance.

David is Co-Artistic Director of ZO Motion Arts with his wife, Holly Seitz-Marchant, developing site-specific installations in natural environments, including tree-climbing as a performance art form.? For the past 4 years David, along with collaborators John Toenjes and Ben Smith at the University of Illinois, are developing computer dance/music systems, investigating ways in which computers offer new tools to make art work, as well as physical educational and therapeutic tools that develop kinesthetic awareness through dynamic audio feedback.

David is the coordinator of the Washington University Somatic Studies Certificate Program in University College, a curriculum of experiential movement practices, complimented by theoretical knowledge from a wide variety of fields investigating the art, spirit, and science of human movement. He is a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique and member of the American Society of Alexander Teachers (AmSAT). He maintains a professional private teaching practice, teaching individuals the methods of F. M. Alexander for re-patterning fundamental movement coordination. He has developed a dance training method called "Quadruped," which applies principles of the Alexander Technique and Dart Procedures to refine fundamental coordination, strength, flexibility, balance. Additionally, David investigates Contact Improvisation as a therapeutic approach for Parkinson's Disease. He also studies the relationship of visual and kinesthetic perception to the aesthetics of human motion.

David was a company member with the Utah Repertory Dance Theatre from 1989 to 1991. David was an Iowa Arts Fellow from 1991 to 1993, earning a Master of Fine Arts degree from University of Iowa.