Ashley Anderson

My work as a dancer and choreographer have led me on a path of public education where my artistic research interests have expanded to include pedagogy and public policy more broadly. My work in education has driven me to formal research opportunities in public education finance. As that pathway developms, my artistic work continues to investigate and interrogate my artist statement below:  

My choreographic work involves nostalgia, much of which is determined by the physical objects that interest me (record players, slide reels, comb & paper kazoos), but is also determined by the medium of dance, something that by its nature passes without appropriate documentation for the experience. Nostalgia generates interest in the concept of physically inserting myself into the history of people I don’t know. In my work this has meant dancing to their workout records, dancing inside their family vacation slideshows, replicating their childhood songs and fracturing their narratives through a combination of physical momentum and precise visual design.I was trained for concert dance. I was taught that choreography was meant to happen on a stage before a large audience but learned later that this scenario was frequently impossible even for established artists. I search for new contexts to share performance – and not those mediated by new technologies. Rather, I imagine returning to live performance as a gathering not dissimilar from a family slide show.