Dance

About Ann, dancewise: Ann Glaviano is a writer, dance-maker, DJ, and born-and-raised New Orleanian. Since 2013 Ann has directed the New Orleans-based performance project Known Mass, which is an ongoing collaboration between New Orleans dancers, musicians, photographers, filmmakers, and visual artists, aesthetically and ethically motivated by devised-theatre and DIY performance traditions. Ann recruits professional dancers, the ultra-classically trained and the twenty-first-century contemporary weirdos, to perform alongside Ultimate Frisbee athletes and roller-derby bruisers; she invites musicians who are typically more oriented to the rock-club scene to create lush noisescapes for the dancers to inhabit. The resulting pieces tend to be preoccupied with community – how it’s built and how it’s dismantled – and foreground the fine line between the banal and the absurd, playing out with both humor and poignancy what the writer and dance-maker Deborah Hay calls “the full, the sensuous, and the completely unremarkable.”

As a dance artist Ann maintains a wide-ranging practice: she’s danced with the New Orleans Ballet Theatre, executed a lecture/demonstration alongside Deborah Hay, choreographed for Hulu, engaged in incendiary national dance advocacy and institutional protest work with the re:FRAME collective, improvised the “ballerina rap” bit onstage with Hannibal Buress, and performed in a dystopic durational art installation in Dresden. In summer 2025 she worked with contemporary choreographer Corina Kinnear on a new piece, Forgotten Time, devised in three weeks in Paris and performed in Los Angeles at the Dance at the Odyssey festival curated by Barbara Müller-Wittman. Ann’s first dance film, 01_fieldrecording, had its world premiere in January 2019 at Highways, an experimental performance art venue in Los Angeles, selected for the inaugural event of their MOTION CAPTURE series. In February 2019 she was an Associate Artist in Residence with Deborah Hay at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. In December 2023 she performed her full-length solo work-in-progress, an animal dance, in residency at MANCC. Her solo work has been presented by the International Dance Festival New Orleans and COAST DANCEfest in Ocean Springs and supported with grants from the NEFA National Dance Project and the National Performance Network.

A student of Karl Rogers and Eric Nordstrom, Ann hosts and guest-teaches contact improv classes and jams in New Orleans and beyond. She administered the (currently on hiatus) Vector Series of technique, improv, and phrasework classes for professional dancers through Known Mass. Other contributions to the New Orleans dance community have included a writing and analysis project, NOLA Dance Reader, and Dance in NOLA, an online catalog of weekly classes, auditions, workshops, and other resources for local adult dancers that Ann maintained as a community service from June 2013-April 2015. She initiated the Contact Improv New Orleans group and volunteered as site editor for the New Orleans Dance Network in its inaugural year.

Productions (as director/choreographer)

an animal dance (producer, director, performer). At Siberia Lounge (opening for Shannon Stewart and Aurora Nealand), December 2018; INsideOUT at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (Daytona Beach), March 2019; COAST DANCEfest at the Mary C. O’Keefe Cultural Center (Ocean Springs), March 2019; re:FRAME solo choreographic residency showcase at Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, December 2019; re:FRAME at The Front Gallery, December 2021-January 2022. In digital residency August 2021, with essays, photos, and video clips from the solo process, at Southern Heat Exchange: Intro / Week 1 / Week 2 / Week 3 / Week 4. In residency at Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans 2020-2023. “The Small Dance” community conversation and workshop offered via the re:FRAME Community Dance Festival, December 2021, co-hosted by Beaubourg Theatre and CACNO. 13-minute solo study (“animal”) presented opening night of the inaugural International Dance Festival New Orleans at Hotel Peter and Paul, August 2023. Evening-length work-in-progress presented in residency at MANCC (Tallahassee), December 2023. Evening-length work in progress presented in residency at Basin Arts (Lafayette, LA), July 2024.

Work on an animal dance has also been supported over the years by my colleagues in the re:FRAME choreographic collective, the Contemporary Art Center New Orleans’s 2020-21 Commissioning Initiative with a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Louisiana Division of the Arts; the Creation and Development Fund grants from the National Performance Network; and a NEFA National Dance Project Finalist Award.

Known Mass No. 3, “St. Maurice.” Producer, director, performer. May 2019, performances in New Orleans and Shreveport, with grant support from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, the New Orleans Theatre Association, and the Nelson Foundation (Shreveport). Nominated for a Big Easy Award for outstanding dance presentation. More info here.

01_fieldrecording. Dance film. Production, direction, choreography, sound design, performance: co-credit with Chris Givens. World premiere at Highways (Los Angeles), in the inaugural event of their new Motion Capture movement film series, January 18, 2019.

The First. Choreographer. S1E5, directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven. The First is an American drama web television series created by Beau Willimon and starring Sean Penn and Natascha McElhone. Season 1 aired September 14, 2018.

Known Mass, “Secret Beach,” in collaboration with visual artist Catherine Nelson for her exhibit A TUSSLE WITH THE GENIUS LOCI, opening at Art Egg June 1, 2018. Performance ongoing from 7-8pm, co-choreographed by Rebecca Allen, Dewuan Frances, Ann Glaviano, directed by Ann Glaviano.

Known Mass at Bach Around the Clock: Improv in performance with local musicians Mike Wilkinson (Marker), Andy Gibbs (Thou), and Melissa Guion (MJ Guider) and local dancers Rebecca Allen, Katya Chizayeva, Ann Glaviano, Dewuan Magee, and Shannon Stewart. Directed by Ann Glaviano. March 23, 2018, at 10:22pm at Trinity Episcopal Church.

Known Mass No. 3: “St. Maurice.” Producer, director, performer. In residency at Art Klub November 2017-February 2018 as part of Prospect.4, “The Aesthetics of Garbage,” curated by Meryl Murman. Work-in-progress showing February 17, 2018, 2pm and 8pm, at Art Klub.

Salon at Sidearm Gallery (St. Roch). Duet with Scotty Heron (dance, piano, voice). January 26, 2018.

Be/With. Eight dancers and eight musicians in improvisation / collaboration. Curated by Shannon Stewart. Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, January 4, 2018.

Known Mass at the Fall Dance Festival, Ocean Springs, MS. Director, performer. Contact improvisation in performance; music by Maria Browne Widmer. The Mary C., October 1, 2016.

Known Mass No. 2: Out Music in Contact w/ Silo Homes. Producer, director, performer. Contact improvisation in performance; music by Matt Carney. Art Klub, July 2, 2016.

Known Mass No. 2: Out Music in Contact w/ Jasper den Hartigh. Producer, director, performer. Contact improvisation in performance; music by Jasper den Hartigh. Art Klub, June 8, 2016.

The Bakkhai. Choreographer/Lead Chorus. Workshop production of Euripides’ The Bakkhai  (translation/direction by Elizabeth Gross and Ned Moore, music by Tucker Fuller). Four-week residency at the Marigny Opera House with performances June 12-13, 2015.

Known Mass No. 1. Producer, director, performer. Contact improvisation in performance; music by Jasper den Hartigh. Marigny Opera House, June 20-21, 2015.

Known Mass preview. Producer, director, performer. Contact improvisation in performance; music by Jasper den Hartigh and Matt Carney. DaMata Acupuncture, May 17, 2015.

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