By Charlotte Landreau
@CharlotteLandreau.Graham
My name is Charlotte Landreau.
I was born in Strasbourg, France and trained as a professional rhythmic gymnast for ten years. After a severe ankle injury ended my career, I did not want to lose all my training. Postponing my plans to go to medical school, I auditioned for acting schools, dance schools, and even circus schools.
I was accepted at the Maurice Béjart School—an institution known for producing first-class artists in a variety of fields spanning dance, singing, martial arts, and everything in between. I studied in Switzerland for two years, discovering dance and falling in love with a very specific modern technique: the Graham technique.
After only two years of dance, I went to Paris on a whim to audition for the Martha Graham School in New York. Despite the odds being very much stacked against me, I was accepted. Exhilarated by the opportunity (and slightly concerned by my lack of English proficiency!), I left my family, country, and previous life behind with nothing but a small suitcase for the Big Apple.
I started dancing for the Martha Graham School in Greenwich Village and after six months, I got hired by the Martha Graham Dance Company. I have been dancing with them for seven years, traveling and performing soloist and principal roles all over the world.
⭐️
I am a hyperactive person. As a child I just needed to move, always jumping, running, dancing, spinning and driving my poor parents crazy if I couldn’t. That is why they made me start gymnastics! Later, Dance literally changed my life. I left my family and country to follow that incredible feeling; it was almost a calling. It was so difficult for me to trust it, but how could I not?
How could I have faced myself after, if I did not follow my heart?
Dance saved me.
My cousin was one of the first people to be killed in the 2015 bombings in Paris. It was a very dark time for me. The company needed me to perform, so I was not able to go to her funeral with my family. Not being there for them, trying to accept the awful reality while working, almost broke my heart.
I wanted to quit.
After a few dark days, thinking about going back to France, I realized that simply moving made me feel better.
Speaking did not help.
Thinking did not help.
But dancing on stage, sharing my art and heart with the world, with the audience, centered me and kept the darker thoughts at bay. Dance grounded me and helped me confront and work through the grief and negative emotions at my own pace. Dance became the reason I would get up in the morning. Through dance, I would start smiling again and return to my happy self.
Still today, whenever I have to go through something difficult (life of an artist is hard, life of a dancer is painful), I close my eyes, focus on my breath and just start moving.
When I’m dancing, nothing else matters but the present.
Feeling my hands, toes, arms moving through the air, realizing that the human body is amazing and miraculous; beautiful but ephemeral. Focusing on movement in the present gives me the perspective that this time, is the only time we will ever have.
So you better live it.
So you better dance it.