About Me

Catherine:

I was born in Luxembourg in 1962. I am married, and together we are the grateful parents of four grown-up children and the joyful grandparents of four grandchildren who inspire me every day with their spontaneity, curiosity, and embodied way of being in the world.

Dance has fascinated me for as long as I can remember. As a child and teenager I practiced classical ballet and modern jazz, sensing already that movement was more than form — it was a way of feeling alive. In 2011 I discovered conscious movement practice and its deeply nourishing and regulating power. Five years later, I immersed myself in the world of Open Floor and became a certified Open Floor teacher in July 2019.

Open Floor practice offers me resources that naturally bridge the dance floor and everyday life. This continuity is essential to me: what we discover in movement becomes meaningful when it accompanies us in our relationships, our choices, and the way we meet the world. On the dance floor as in life.

I am deeply involved in Open Floor International, a non-profit organization that has given me so much. Since 2023, I have been serving on the Board as Fundraising Lead and as a member of the General Circle, contributing to the operational life of the organization. I am proud and, above all, very grateful to support an NGO whose practice is rooted in inclusion, embodiment, and the belief that movement can be a resource for everyday life.

I regularly attend Open Floor workshops and trainings abroad, as much as family life and social commitments allow, to nourish my own practice and remain a student as well as a teacher. This ongoing learning is precious to me: it keeps the work alive, humble, and continuously evolving.

Alongside my teaching, I am currently engaged in Gestalt training. One of the founders of Open Floor International, Andrea Juhan, is a Gestalt therapist, and I feel how deeply this approach resonates with our movement practice. This does not make Open Floor therapy, but the shared foundations — presence, awareness, and the wisdom of the here and now — enrich both my teaching and my personal path.

Today, I devote most of my time to my family and to Open Floor International, while teaching regular weekly classes and offering one-day workshops. I feel truly fortunate to dance almost every Saturday with a beautiful, faithful group of dancers. My students are my greatest teachers; their dances are my most generous gift.

In my classes, I love to compare the dance floor — the small one in the studio and the vast one out in the world — to a large kitchen where textures, colours, scents, spices, sweet and sour, softness and intensity all meet and mingle. From this rich mix, new dances are constantly born, each one unique. We move and include.

Over the years, I have come to feel that I am not simply dancing steps, but dancing my life: the joys and the struggles, the ease and the uncertainty, my inner self and my many identities. Embodying all these aspects through movement has brought me greater self-awareness and mindfulness. For me, Open Floor is more than a dance practice — it is a way of being.

I aspire to meet on the dance floor people of all ages and backgrounds, experienced dancers and complete beginners alike. It is this diversity that enriches our shared movement and reflects the richness of life itself. We move and include.

There is a sentence that accompanies me in my everyday life and has become something of a guiding thread for my work. Open Floor practice allows me to live it as fully as I can:

“Our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world, but to un-glove ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold, and the car handle feels wet, and the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being, soft and unrepeatable.”
— Mark Nepo