About Us

The Moving Architects connect people intimately to dance, focusing on creating female-centric collaborative dance works and community-based projects. We do this through performance of original works, educational movement programming for all ages, and public discourse via our popular podcast.

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Founded In 2007

The Moving Architects Story

Erin Carlisle Norton founded The Moving Architects on New Year’s Day, 2007. Growing up in the nooks and crannies of a Victorian house and the Neo-Gothic church outside of Pittsburgh, PA where her father was pastor, she developed a heightened awareness of her experience of physical spaces long-steeped in the passage of time. Adding to this her vigilance in exploring and promoting the female voice and form, TMA is now a female-centric dance company known for creating highly visual, architectural, physically dynamic, and innovative dance works. TMA has toured Central Asia with the US Department of State, across Morocco with Action Danse Festival, and throughout the Midwest, East Coast, and Southern United States. Norton has received choreographic accolades and awards including two NJ State Council on the Arts Choreographic Fellowships. The company regularly collaborates on projects praised by colleagues as “brave and bold and fearless” and by critics as a “fresh and daring aesthetic”. Norton’s work is grounded in collaboration and her physical research in Laban Movement Analysis, modern and postmodern dance techniques, and improvisational study.

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Female-Centric Dance Company

Who We Are

The Moving Architect connects people intimately to dance, focusing on creating female-centric collaborative dance works and community-based projects. We do this through performance of original works, educational movement programming for all ages, and public discourse via our popular podcast.

From Artistic Director Erin Carlisle Norton

Vision and Values

I create dance works that use feminist narratives and ideologies that are deeply explored through collaborative processes.  We have an expansive definition of feminine, delving into complex relationships and roles as mothers/caretakers, partners, and friends, and social dynamics that examine power dynamics and varied qualities and traits of gender.  Through this we outwardly and dynamically embody current and historically lived approaches to the female experience.

I work with artists in dance, visual arts, and sound in creative projects. At the heart of my work are the dance artists and their relationships to each other of trust, boldness, thoughtfulness, and risk. Physical and emotional power are central to my movement grammar; I am drawn to experiences of time through stillness, speed, and overexertion, and effects of weight through force, conflict, and strength. We collaborate with visual artists, incorporating textiles and interactive costumes and objects as they pertain to movement in order to create material and architectural landscapes to engage with physicality. We work with composers and musicians to imbed textures of sound, instrumentation, and rhythm.  Our collaborative processes as a community involve experimentation and trust wherein I lead and facilitate as choreographer and director.  From these perspectives we together create multi-faceted worlds for viewers to enter, experience, relate to, and reflect on.

Meet The Team

The Artists

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