Victoria Marks

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Victoria Marks (born 1954) is a professor of choreography in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA, where she has been teaching since 1995. Before taking her post at UCLA she lived in London, where for three and a half years she worked on her own choreographic projects and served as head of choreography at London Contemporary Dance School, a conservatory for the training of professional dance artists in Europe. She led her own dance company, the Victoria Marks Performance Company in the 1980s.^[1]

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Marks started the Victoria Marks Performance Company in New York.^[2] In 1987 and 1988 she went to London on a Fulbright Fellowship in choreography.^[2] She returned to London again in 1992 to run the choreography program at the London School of Contemporary Dance where she began making works for individual artists.^[2] Marks began her work with mixed-ability dancers in 1992 when Margaret Williams asked her to create a dance for the camera with the mixed-ability company CandoCo.^[2] Marks hoped to change the audiences view of disabilities by portraying them as sexy, smart, funny, and powerful. Her work forces the audience to rethink society’s aesthetic expectations on dance, challenging the audience to explore the possibilities in theatrical dancing involving disabled bodies. of ^[2] Marks loves creating movements that communicate ideas and change peoples perspectives.^[2]