Dance

Upcoming projects (performance & choreography)

  • an animal dance. Test run at The Front. December 28, 29, 30 (2021), January 2 at 7pm. Extremely limited tickets, by reservation only. Free.

    Ann Glaviano performs an animal dance. It is a twenty-minute ballet for accordion. This solo is performed in a small gallery space to permit the observation of the strenuous work of a dancer in proximity and fine detail. Ann will remove her shoes. The audience, approximately five in number, will turn off and on the stage lights. Tickets by reservation only. Doors open five minutes before the performance begins. This event lasts one hour from audience arrival to audience departure. There is no cost for admission; donations are welcome.

    The performance at the Front is a work-in-progress showing / test run for new production elements. Ann is currently an artist-in-residence at the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans as one of the members of re:FRAME, an artist-organized, artist-led cohort of New Orleans-based dance-makers. Each participating artist is building an evening-length solo to be premiered collectively at CACNO in November 2022. Work-in-progress from each cohort member is on view in various media (video, installation, live performance) at the Front from December 11-January 2. This space and time for exhibition was made possible by Shannon Stewart.

    an animal dance is currently supported by the CAC’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. This work has also been made possible through in-kind, financial, and residency support generously provided by Shannon Stewart, Jarina Carvalho, Greg and Margie Schramel, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Meryl Murman, Reese Johanson, Southern Heat Exchange, Twisted Run Retreat, and Beaubourg Theatre. Early drafts of an animal dance were performed at Siberia Lounge in New Orleans (2018), the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, FL (2019), the Mary C. O’Keefe Cultural Arts Center in Ocean Springs, MS (2019), and the Jonathan Ferrara Gallery in New Orleans (2019). Special thanks to the re:FRAME solo choreography cohort: Meryl Murman, Ryuta Iwashita, Shannon Stewart, Jeremy Guyton, Yanina Orellana.
  • “The Small Dance” community conversation and workshop, part of the re:FRAME Community Dance Festival, December 16-18, 2021. Free. Reservation required for workshop. No “dance training” required. Cohosted by the Beaubourg Theatre and Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans.

    “The Small Dance” community conversation. December 16, 2021, 8-9pm at Beaubourg. Writer and dance-maker Ann Glaviano has questions for you. What is the purpose of dread? How do you move through it into the future, coping with uncertainty? In our community, we are experts in specialized forms of dread: we deal with dread seasonally, from June to November, as tropical storms make their way up the Gulf; we live with the long-term dread of what will happen to our city as our coastline erodes; we spend an afternoon in dread when a hard rain comes and we aren’t sure which pumps are working, if any. But we live with garden-variety dreads, too—unexpected bills, our least favorite household chores, the inevitability of death. Ann is exploring, in both her dance work and her writing, whether it is possible to solve for dread, and what it might mean for the quality of one’s life if one could face uncertainty—even catastrophe—without it. In this community conversation we will reflect as a group on the things we dread, how we approach them, and what happens when we finally arrive in the dreaded moment—including pain, including joy. We will share the tools that help keep us moving—what Ann, quoting Steve Paxton, calls “the small dance.” No cost to attend.

    “The Small Dance”: a workshop for every body. December 17, 2021, 3-5pm at Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans. It’s been known for millennia that most real happiness comes from a sanctification of the ordinary. –Steven Snyder // Ann Glaviano shares tools for how to get moving and call it dancing, using your skills of awareness and attention. No dance experience required whatsoever. Also appropriate for advanced dancers interested in improvisation strategies and novel movement pathways. We will practice noticing, we will practice taking up space, and we will practice being enough. We will surprise ourselves. Certainly we will laugh. Wear comfortable clothes you can move freely in. This workshop will also be a meditation on themes discussed in Ann’s community conversation; the events can be attended separately but will be resonant together. Limited space available; no cost to attend, reserve in advance.

    01_fieldrecording. New Orleans premiere. Duet dance film, co-created with Chris Givens. December 17, 2021, 9pm at Beaubourg. Presented as part of Dance Shorts: A Screening of 5 Short Dance Films by re:FRAME Choreographers. No cost to attend. 01_fieldrecording had its world premiere at Highways (Los Angeles), selected for the inaugural event of their MOTION CAPTURE film series, January 2019.

  • american / woman. Solo choreographic process conceived, directed, and facilitated by Betsy Miller asking, “How do we create an alternative geography that follows the existing map but develops from a logic other than the dominant logic of the nation state?” In this line of inquiry, Betsy is traveling around the United States to collaborate with a woman dance artist in each state, creating a solo for each artist based on her interests and personal history. I will be the Louisiana woman. Betsy will be sharing rehearsal footage, notes, interview transcripts, and other artifacts from the collaborative processes here. Fifteen-minute solo, set November 2021, performances pending. (If you need a 15-minute solo to round out a program, in New Orleans or otherwise, hit me up.)

  • Known Mass: Collective Intelligence Movement Workshop + Performance. Four-week ensemble devising process for dancers/pedestrians, directed by me, hosted by the free school at Beaubourg Theatre. Three-hour meetings on four Sundays in March, with performance on March 22. No cost to participate in the workshops, cheap/NOTAFLOF entry for performance. Details here. – POSTPONED BECAUSE OF THE PANDEMIC, NEW DATES TBD

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 and artists in other disciplines, 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.” From 2013 to 2019 Ann has produced and directed 11 collaborative projects with local dancers, musicians, photographers, filmmakers, and visual artists.

As a freelance dancer Ann has performed with the New Orleans Ballet Theatre and the New Orleans Opera Association, among many others. She has choreographed for Hulu’s television show The First, an episode directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven (Mustang). Ann’s 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 the legendary Deborah Hay at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. In March 2019 her solo work was presented at COAST DANCEfest in Ocean Springs. Most recently (September 2019) she performed in a dystopic faux-corporate durational art installation in Dresden, Germany.

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.

Past productions (as director/choreographer)

  • an animal dance (solo performance) 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. 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 2020-2022. “The Small Dance” community conversation and workshop offered via the re:FRAME Community Dance Festival, December 2021, co-hosted by Beaubourg Theatre and CACNO.
  • Known Mass No. 3, “St. Maurice.” 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. 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.” 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. 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. 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. 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.
  • Director/Performer. Known Mass No. 1. Contact improvisation in performance; music by Jasper den Hartigh. Marigny Opera House, June 20-21, 2015.
  • Director/Performer. Known Mass preview. Contact improvisation in performance; music by Jasper den Hartigh and Matt Carney. DaMata Acupuncture, May 17, 2015.

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