Marlies Yearby

Marlies Yearby is an artist, choreographer, and director with a global perspective who has created work across various platforms including theater, film, and diverse multimedia. Yearby has developed a creative process called In Our Bones Technique as an acknowledgment of the legacies, lived experiences, memories, and day-to-day energies ever-present in moving bodies at work. In Our Bones Technique centers on the practices of observation, discovery, and play. Her creative practices develop a visceral connection to the work, which brings forth integrity and authenticity in its performance. Yearby’s work is internationally recognized. She is the Tony and Dora Award-nominated choreographer of the original production of RENT and received the Drama League Award for the Los Angeles production of RENT. Her work was licensed for the movie production and she is the choreographer of the CINECAST of RENT’s final Broadway performance. Yearby received a Helen Hayes Award nomination for her choreography for The Oedipus Plays at Washington Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC, directed by Michael Khan. She received a Bessie Award as a collaborator with writers Lisa Jones and Alva Rogers for Stained. She choreographed Shay Young Blood’s Talking Bones at the Penumbra Theater in Minnesota, directed by Laurie Carlos, and Rita Dove’s Darker Face of the Earth at the Guthrie Theater in Minnesota, directed by Lou Bellamy. She is the choreographer of Sekou Sundiata’s Mystery of Love at the American Musical Theater Festival in Pennsylvania, directed by Talvin Wilks. She has gained critical acclaim for her company, Movin’ Spirits Dance Theater, in her role as director and choreographer of Brown Butterfly, which she co-conceived with originator and composer Craig Harris as a multimedia celebration of the life and times of Muhammad Ali. With her collaborator Aku Kadogo, Yearby directed and choreographed for poet Jessica Care Moore’s Salt City, an Afro-futuristic fantasy techno choreo-poem inspired by the salt mines of Detroit.