AVID Dance
Artistic Ventures in Dance (AVID) is a new dance project company that will premiere its first performances in NYC on June 26 and 27, 2024. Founded by dancer/ choreographers Emily Speed and Tanya Trombly, AVID creates “ART that MOVES. ” AVID seeks to make a positive impact on society and create a human connection through dance traditions and innovative art. They bring together a team of local and national choreographers, dancers, composers, and musicians to collaborate and create original works. AVID is a celebration of life and what it means to be fully alive and human today.
Anne-Marie is collaborating with choreographer Ursula Verduzco to create an original ballet that will explore notions of personhood being the result of connections to our community and the natural environment, specifically through the lens of women’s shared experiences.
The Project Story
AVID, a brand new woman-led and founded dance company is committed to creating works that awaken and enliven one’s sense of what it means to be human in the world today. They will present their inaugural dance performance at The Theater at St. Jean’s in Manhattan on June 26 and 27 2024. One of the pieces to be performed will be a collaboration between choreographer Ursula Verduzco (she/her) and composer Anne-Marie Keane (she/her), featuring all 10 dancers of the company, accompanied by the all-female musical group Ensemble Mycelium.
At the heart of the piece lies the question, what is a person? Societies around the world teach that a person is an individual, a discrete being wholly unto themselves; a neatly labeled and bordered Zoom tile, packaged and ready for shipping. But Ursula and Anne-Marie assert that personhood is a much more expansive and inclusive phenomenon. What makes a human a person and not just an individual is their connection, through shared experiences, through memories, through natural rhythms of life, to every other living thing around them, human and otherwise. It is through this interconnectedness to our community and to our ecosystem that we find and develop our personhood.
The piece specifically seeks to highlight the power of connecting to the idea of the “natural woman”, that is, a woman who is in tune with her own biorhythms and those of the world around her. Every human being has connections to other humans and to the natural world in some way, but Ursula and Anne-Marie seek to explore specifically how womens’ connections to each other, to their female ancestors, and to the natural world can be sources of identity and empowerment. For example, women naturally have the unique potential to create, bear, and nurture new life, even if they do not personally bear children. They hold the liberatory power to connect women to each other, to their female ancestors, and to the collective mother that is “Mother Earth”. It is through such communal acts of feminine acknowledgement and matrilineal remembering that women, and by their example all people, can shed the isolated boxes of existence that the modern culture of hyperindividualism upholds and cultivate a way of being that is more aligned with their naturally and communally interconnected essential selves.
The Music Story
WIP