Marie France Forcier is a choreographer, performer, writer, and pedagogue of western contemporary dance forms, born in Montreal. Through studio work, public performance, and community initiative, she researches the intersection of somatic practices, trauma studies, and choreography. An Associate Professor of Dance at the University of Calgary’s School of Creative and Performing Arts, she received her conservatory training from the School of Toronto Dance Theatre in 2005, her Master of Fine Arts in Choreography from York University in Toronto in 2014, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Practice at Liverpool John Moores University through the Transart Institute in New York/Berlin as a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada doctoral fellow. 

Her body of creative work has been presented on platforms spanning little-known urban sites, to dance-dedicated proscenium spaces across North America, Europe, and Asia. In collaborative artistic capacities, she has performed live and on film in disciplines ranging from family theatricals to contemporary dance, to performance art to aerial circus, touring extensively on four continents. Her trade articles can be found at The Dance Current, and her academic writing, in the books Literature and Psychology: Writing, Trauma and the Self  (2019), Topography of Trauma: Fissures, Disruptions and Transfigurations (2019), What Happened? Re-presenting Traumas, Uncovering Recoveries (2019), and the journal Dance Chronicles (Taylor and Francis/ Routledge).

She was an Artistic Director at Hub 14 in Toronto from 2013-2015, a Board Director at Dancers Studio West for three seasons in Calgary from 2018-2021 (Chair: 2020-2021), the Dance Division Lead at the University of Calgary from 2021-2022, and continues to serve on several local, national, and international juries and committees.

Strongly tied to Eastern Canada, she lives with her two young sons and works within the traditional territories of the people of Treaty 7 and the Métis Nation of Alberta, Region III.