Dr. Marie N'diaye (PhD) is a Lindy Hop and African American Jazz dance choreographer, performer and educator as well as a dance researcher.
Marie has been dancing almost as long as she has been walking, training mostly in modern Jazz. She fell in love with Lindy Hop and other Jazz dances in 2006.
The Lindy Hop is an African-American social dance that was developed in Harlem, New York City, in the 1920s and 1930s and originally evolved with the jazz music of that time. It was very popular during the Swing era of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Lindy Hop grew from the Charleston and Breakaway and incorporate jazz and tap rhythms. It is a Street and Club partnered dance and is a member of the swing dance family.
Jazz Dance ( or African American Jazz Dance - AAJD, nowadays also called Authentic Jazz, Solo Jazz or Jazz Roots) is the solo jazz dance that grew alongside jazz music. Flash, eccentric or class acts that you can see danced by Albert Minns, Leon James, Katherine Dunham, Marie Bryant, Jeni Legon, The Nicholas Brothers and many many more.
A true scientist (She obtained her PhD in Neuroimmunology from Karolinska Institute, Stockholm Sweden in 2018), Marie loves history and facts. She has been applying her scientific method and dance education to conduct an embodied practice-based research of Jazz dance through the study of original video clips and collaborations with many established dancers. She has also researched the cultural and social context of the Jazz dance era through literature study and interviews of artists. Her main focus is on the African American Jazz Women and Chorines (chorus girls) of the time. In 2023, Marie completed the Choreomundus Program, an International Master in Dance Knowledge, Practice, and Heritage. This program focuses on dance and other movement systems as cultural heritage and includes Ethnochoreology, Anthropology of Dance, Dance Studies, and Heritage Studies.
Marie worked and danced with the fantastic teachers of the Cat's Corner Studio in Montreal, Canada and Chicago Swing Dance Studio in Stockholm, Sweden. She also teaches internationally, in France, Spain, England, Australia, Russia, USA, China, Korea, South Africa... as well as at the world famous Herräng Dance Camp in Sweden.
Currently, Marie is a board member of the newly founded Black Lindy Hoppers Fund, an organization dedicated to support African and African diasporic dancers and artists in Lindy Hop and Jazz. She is also leading Collective Voices for Change a non-profit organization created together with other dancers and scholars in order to propose a platform to address social issues in the Jazz dance community. The current focus of CVFC is to address the issues of cultural appropriation and racial inequities in the dance scene.
