Although she was honored in the visual-art category, Sullivan also trained in dance and choreography, and her 1940s-era works Danse dans la neige, D_dale, Dualit_, and Black and Tan Fantasy are said to have marked the dawn of modern dance in Canada.
Sullivan was born in Montreal, and trained at the ê_cole des beaux-arts and was at the forefront of the Automatiste movement, with painter Paul-ê_mile Borduas, in Quebec, and was among the signers of the group's 1948 manifesto, Refus global.
A retrospective of her work was held at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2003; a book about her dance philosophy, From Automatism to Modern Dance: Fran‹oise Sullivan with Franziska Boas in New York was published by the Dance Collective Press in Toronto.
