BIO
morgaine ann de leonardis is a jersey-city born irish-italian american choreographer, director, movement director, and educator working in video/film and live performance. She has 10 years of professional experience creating both independently and as a collaborating artist in the US, UK, and Europe.
de leonardis is skilled at telling stories through movement and developing the physicality of dynamic characters and tangible worlds. Whether through a camera lens, at the theater, or in immersive and site-specific work, she is focused on emotional risk and engaging the physical body of the audience in vulnerable, care-filled, and memorable ways.
Currently in her independent practice she is researching choreography of the camera, the body as landscape, a thin line between violence and tenderness, and place as scene partner.
Recent projects:
assistant movement director of Orlando (directed by Shani Erez) Courtyard Theatre, London, UK (2026)
choreographer and movement director of Changing Room (directed by Turkina Faso). Finalist in PhotoVouge’s Woman by Woman Film Festival 2026 (presented in Italy & Korea) and streaming on Nowness. (2026)
movement director and intimacy coordinator of PISSNCHIPS (directed by Turkina Faso) presented at Manchester Film Festival. (2026)
director and choreographer of music video of Something Simple by The Penelopes. (2026)
independent work:
as a director and choreographer, de leonardis has been invited and commissioned to make work for The Buffini Chao Deck at the National Theatre (UK), The Space Theatre (UK), the historic Loews Jersey Theater, SMUSH Gallery, and the Ace Hotel Manhattan. (USA). with collaborator Alexandrina Flemming, she created SYMVIOSI, an eco-dance film in conversation with the Ionian Sea commissioned by KosaMare. done in collaboration with marine biologists (Kefelonia, Greece).
Event choreography includes Art House Production's Dinner En Blanc, Jersey City at Lincoln Park for an audience of 1,000. (USA). stage work has been shown at: Courtyard Theatre (London, UK), Art House Productions Theater (NJ), South Orange Performing Arts Center (NJ) and Conwell Theater (Philadelphia).
With a 2024 Arts Council England’s DYCP award she experimented with non-liner storytelling and established accessibility practices for immersive theater with 8 mini shows of lost in time: an interactive dance-theatre research experience that invited audiences of 9 to reflect on memory, dreams, and the passage of time.
In 2023 morgaine was an Artist in Residence at Monira Foundation (USA) and in 2024 was artist in residence at the English National Ballet (UK) where she researched multiple characters and storylines for her 2024 works including:
Let Live, a site-specific opera on death. (commissioned by SMUSH Gallery)
change, a stage work about love, chosen family, and the pain of illness. (South Orange Performing Arts Center) (funded by the NJ State Council of the Arts)
Opening Reception, a gallery-specific piece (funded by the Jersey City Arts and Culture Trust Funds)
in 2023, de leonardis directed and choreographed what the Jersey City Times calls, a “clever and emotionally effluent” interactive dance and dinner show, no place like home (The Box Cafe). (funded by her 2023 NJ State Council of the Arts Choreographic Fellowship)
