Join us for drinks and an intimate session with choreographer Ann Carlson. She'll share insights on current projects "Doggie Hamlet" and "The Symphonic Body" as well as the process of developing interdisciplinary work.

Doggie Hamlet, https://vimeo.com/111391694
The Symphonic Body, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra0tn7eVTxg

***More about the artist***
Ann Carlson is an interdisciplinary artist who borrows from the disciplines of dance, performance, theater, visual and conceptual art, and often dismantles conventional boundaries between artist and subject. Carlson's work takes the form of solo performance, site-specific projects, ensemble dance and theatrical works, and performance/video. She also often works within a series format, creating socially engaged performance structures over a period of years that adapt and tour to multiple sites.

Carlson is the recipient of over thirty commissions and numerous awards for her artistic work. Her awards include: a 2016 Creative Capital Award, a 2015 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award in Contemporary Dance, a 2015 National Dance Project Award, a 2014 Multi-Art Production Fund Grant, a USA Artist Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and a Fellowship from the Foundation for Contemporary Art. She was an Artist Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies Fellowship/Harvard University and at Stanford University’s Humanities Center. Carlson has received three awards from the National Choreographic Initiative; a Doris Duke Award for New Work; the first Cal/Arts Alpert Award in Choreography, and a prestigious three-year choreographic fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Stanford University was both the site and inspiration of Carlson’s latest work, The Symphonic Body: a performance/orchestral work made entirely of gestures. Carlson just completed a year long residency at the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA where The Symphonic Body, performed by 100 people from across UCLA’s campus, had its second incarnation at Royce Hall on November 21, 2015.

Animals are often at the center of Carlson's inquiry in her solo dance/performanceworks. She has collaborated with a number of animals, who have performed live with Carlson. Horses, dogs, cats, cows, fish, and goats have made their way into her works. "Dumbo Redacted" is informed by the movement, intelligence and mythology of the largest land mammal on earth. Another of Carlson’s current projects, Doggie Hamlet, is a performance with a herding dog, a flock of sheep, and four human performers.