Aynsley Vandenbroucke

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Called “gifted” by The New Yorker and “an elegant, sensitive thinker” by The New York Times, Aynsley Vandenbroucke has been choreographing, curating, and creating spaces for dance in New York since 2000. A Laban Movement Analyst, she is passionate about the role of movement and embodiment in every aspect of life. She sees dance (whether in choreographing or teaching) as a way to explore fundamental human questions and find new perspectives at the unlikely intersections of different fields and modes of thought. Some recent explorations have included making written dances, looking at the political implications of finding one’s own physical grounding, and using Thomas Aquinas’s “Unmoved Mover” proof from the Summa Theologica to complicate an exercise of transitioning from stillness to motion.  She’s taught at Princeton since 2011 where she’s developed innovative courses including “Being and Doing” and “Power, Structure, and the Human Body” and also Performance Lab, which brings together students across the arts to create new work.

Aynsley’s choreography has been performed throughout NYC (at Danspace Project, The Chocolate Factory, Baryshnikov Arts Center, CPR- Center for Performance Research, Dixon Place, Dance New Amsterdam, and Lincoln Center Institute’s Clark Studio Theater, among others) as well as in San Francisco, Colorado, and Brazil.  Her newest performance, And, will premiere at Abrons Arts Center (NYC), March 30-April 2, 2017.

Aynsley co-founded Mount Tremper Arts, a center for contemporary performance and visual arts in the Catskill Mountains. There she played a large role in the design and building of the studio performance space, co-curated an internationally recognized festival until 2014, and created initiatives to support artists and welcome new audience members. The New York Times wrote, “Mount Tremper Arts has become a quietly thriving offshoot of the city's contemporary performance world: a magnet for adventurous urban artists and a devoted local audience."

Her work has been supported by grants and fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, The Jerome Foundation, The Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ Emergency Grant, The Manhattan Community Arts Fund, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and The Gibney Dance Center, among others. Her writing on dance has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Movement Research Performance Journal, and The Performance Club. She was on the faculty of the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies for five years and helped coordinate the program there. She has also taught at Lehman College in the Bronx. She graduated in 1999 from North Carolina School of the Arts where she studied on scholarship and was nominated for the Princess Grace Award. Her previous studies include intensive ballet and contemporary dance training at the Merce Cunningham Dance Studio, The Alvin Ailey American Dance Center in New York, and ImpulsTanz in Vienna, The Ruth Page Foundation, and Hubbard Street Dance in Chicago.