BIO: Ann Glaviano is a writer, dance-maker, DJ, and born-and-raised New Orleanian. As a dance artist she 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, written on commission for the National Performance Network, and performed in a dystopic durational art installation in Dresden. Since 2013 she's directed the New Orleans–based performance project Known Mass, aesthetically and ethically motivated by devised theatre and DIY punk traditions, producing collaborative projects with local dancers, musicians, photographers, filmmakers, and visual artists. Her first dance film, 01_field recording, had its world premiere in 2019 at Highways in Los Angeles. For more than a decade, Ann has run a friendly neighborhood dive-bar dance party called HEATWAVE! spinning dance jams on vinyl from 1957-1974; she has been featured in Elle and nominated by Offbeat as Best DJ in New Orleans. Her prose has appeared in Best American Short Stories, Tin House, and Slate, among other publications. In 2018, in recognition of her cross-disciplinary artistic achievements and track record of art community facilitation, Ann was honored as one of Gambit's 40 Under 40. You can follow Ann at @annglaviano and subscribe to her newsletter for updates on future work.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SOLO / CREATED WITH SUPPORT FROM THE FOLLOWING: The New Orleans premiere of an animal dance is supported in part by funding from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation; a spring 2026 residency at Other Plans Gallery; and a 2026-2027 residency at New Marigny Theatre. MVP shoutouts: Cameron, Paul, and the rest of the team at New Marigny / Church of Arts & Sciences, and engineer Daryl J. Marse.

Generated by a solo assignment from Deborah Hay ("make an animal dance"), I have built this piece from a ten-minute solo performed at Siberia in December 2018 to an evening-length work, with many works-in-progress showings in and out of New Orleans, and much of the work sidelined by the pandemic. The support I received to keep working on it has been extensive. One of five solos developed as part of re:FRAME collective's Close Animals: Soliloquies on Being, an animal dance is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund project co-commissioned by Basin Arts, the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, and NPN. an animal dance was also supported by 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 NEFA National Dance Project Finalist Award; the Maggie Allessee National Center for Choreography (MANCC); the Atlantic Center for the Arts; and the International Dance Festival New Orleans. Additional in-kind, financial, and residency support has been generously provided by Southern Heat Exchange, BODYART, Tulane Dance, Week of Dance at Parker Dance Academy, Twisted Run Retreat, and champion art supporters and organizers Jarina Carvalho, Corina Kinnear, Catherine Nelson, Leslie Scott, Greg and Margie Schramel, Meryl Murman, Reese Johanson, Shannon Stewart, and Summer Baldwin. Very special thanks to my colleagues in the re:FRAME solo choreography cohort: Meryl Murman, Ryuta Iwashita, Shannon Stewart, Jeremy Guyton.

With gratitude to New Marigny Theatre: Since 2013 I have adventured side by side in creative process with my colleagues on the DIY art scene while simultaneously engaging in dance advocacy on behalf of our communities in south Louisiana, in protest of the national dance funding and presentation mechanisms that pretend artists in the Southeast don't exist. These mechanisms drive the siphoning of Southeastern artists to other parts of the country where artists can be more easily validated and supported by institutional infrastructure.

But all communities need artists. We don't just need art - we need artists. Artists as teachers, as mentors, as role models demonstrating that a life devoted to art-making is real and possible - but also artists as people who live in a place, invested as residents, as working professionals, as neighbors and friends.

Spaces like New Marigny Theatre do essential work in our underresourced region to foster and retain artists in Louisiana, through facilitating arts creation, offering arts presentation, spurring artist growth, connecting artists to audiences, and building community through art.

Ann Glaviano performs an animal dance - July 23, 7pm

New Orleans premiere at New Marigny Theatre