Video

   Ann Carlson/inkBoat, These Are The Ones We Fell Among

  • Interdisciplinary artist Ann Carlson introduces her newest work, a duet created in collaboration with inkBoat (based in Switzerland)

2023/2024 Tour Dates

Please check back soon for newly announced tour dates!

Photo Gallery

High-resolution photos are not available on this webpage. To access high resolution images or technical specifications for this artist send an email to: info@elsieman.org, be sure to include which artist you are interested in!

Press

“’For me, this is an ever-expanding frame for what dance is and who gets to participate,’ says Carlson.”

– Tonia Lynn Barber, LaLaMag.com

full article (PDF)

“Few artists are so able and even willing to bridge the gap between art and the everyday at such a high level, but Ms. Carlson does so by documenting life’s beauty and absurdity.”

Gia Kourlas, The New York Times

full article (PDF)

“Ann Carlson is a conceptual artist who uses gesture, text and humor to break your heart.”

– William Harris, New York Times

Repertory

These Are the Ones We Fell Among is a one-hour duet performance that takes inspiration from the movements, myths, and metaphors of our non-human cousins – from our most endangered marine mammal, the vaquita, to our largest land mammal, the elephant. Made virtually during the pandemic, this duet invites viewers into a world reminiscent of Samuel Becket’s renderings. Using Carlson’s poignant sense of humor, coupled with a nod to the absurd, this performance wrestles with the current predicament of collective loss on our planet.

Performed by Shinichi Iova-Koga and Dana Iova-Koga from the company inkBoat, These Are the Ones We Fell Among juxtaposes elegance in the face of extinction, while looking for humor and grace amid excrement and fear.

“A splendid hour – an affirmation of form and content exploded into a new field of sorts. What a tour de force!”

– choreographer Margaret Jenkins

Commissioned by inkBoat and ODC Theater, These are the Ones We Fell Among received its stage premiere in November, 2021 in San Francisco at ODC Theater and was presented on tour in Oct, 2023 at UCLA/CAP in Los Angeles.

Dumbo Redacted is a solo stage-based work choreographed and performed by Ann Carlson. It is informed by the movement and mythologies surrounding earth’s largest land mammal. Set inside a circus ring and caught in a story out of sequence and out of date, Dumbo Redacted plays with clumsy grace and wild quiet as it collides and colludes with time, gravity, fury, and redemption. 

The Symphonic Body is a performance made entirely of gestures. It is a movement-based orchestral work performed by people gathered together by a common workplace, locale, or theme. Instead of instruments, individuals in this orchestra perform gestural portraits based on the motions they use every day.

 

To build this project, choreographer Ann Carlson becomes an “embedded artist” in each location. Through a process of observation and interview, Carlson works one-on-one with each participant to build a choreographed portrait from the movements they do everyday. (During this time of covid, it is possible to begin the one-on-one time with Carlson virtually.) The individual portraits ultimately knit together in real time as Carlson “conducts” rehearsals and the culminating performances live. The movement-based “music” that makes up The Symphonic Body results in a blend of unwitting everyday gestures transformed into a kind of dance. The building of the portraits becomes an experience of being witnessed and seen. The public performance of these portraits underscores the power and presence of the individual in relation to community. By engaging with this choreographic performance practice, participants (performers and audience members alike) come together in concert to expand, renew, and re-experience the artistry embedded in the everyday.

Continue reading about The Symphonic Body
Read about 2015 The Symphonic Body residency at UCLA

Ann Carlson dances with a rabbit, a tortoise, a dog, a chicken, 2 baby goats, and a gold fish in her 40-minute work created for 1-4 year olds, Animal Dance. Each animal magically enters the stage space on their own. Ann responds to each animal’s inherent dance, improvising a singular dance and special song for each animal. Directed by Peter Brosius (Children’s Theater Company, Minneapolis), Animal Dance was created for audiences up to 120 in scale and celebrates the spirit that all movement is dance.

 

Animal Dance is available for a minimum of 3 days of shows with a load-in/tech/rehearsal advance of 2 days before the first day of shows. 2 and 3 show days are possible. Presenters/venues will supply and care for the animals (with guidance!) Ann will tour with another performer who will share the schedule of performances with her.

American Theater article about Animal Dance: https://elsieman.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/at_apr16_animal_dance.pdf

CTC archived weblink about Animal Dance: https://www.childrenstheatre.org/about-us/newsfeed/896-what-is-animal-dance-all-about

Bios

Ann Carlson’s artistic work borrows from the disciplines of dance, performance, theater, as well as visual, conceptual and social art practices. Her work takes the form of solo dance performance, site-specific performance projects, ensemble dance works, and performance/video. Carlson often works within a series format, and develops performance structures over a period of years that adapt to multiple sites. Carlson is adept at working with a wide variety of people. Whether with lawyers, security guards, fly-fisherman, ranchers, ballet dancers, professors, or gardeners, her work addresses the biases and boundaries, stereotypes and striations of contemporary culture.

More about Ann...

Carlson is the recipient of numerous awards and over thirty commissions for her artistic work. Awards include: Creative Capital Award, Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, Two American Masters, numerous Creative Capital MAPfund awards; a Rockefeller Seed Grant; a USA Artist Fellowship; a Guggenheim Fellowship; a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship; a MANCC’s Living Legacy Artist; and a Fellowship from the Foundation for Contemporary Art, among others. She was an artist fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies Fellowship/Harvard University. 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. Carlson completed a residency hosted by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation on Captiva Island, Florida and most recently was in residence at Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, sponsored by the Center for the Art of Performance, at UCLA.

 

Carlson’s current projects include; “The Symphonic Body” a performance made entirely of gestures, “Doggie Hamlet” a site specific spectacle performed by a flock of sheep, three herding dogs and six human performers, “Dumbo Redacted”, a solo made and performed by Carlson, inspired by earth’s largest land mammal, and the end of Ringling Bros Circus. Carlson’s latest project is a series of duets for women and their dogs entitled “Femme d’un certain âge avec son chien.”

 

Carlson’s recent collaborative projects include “Elizabeth, the dance” made with the Ririe -Woodbury Dance Company, of Salt Lake City UT, “Animal Dance” a dance for very young audience members made with Children’s Theater Company, Minneapolis, Carlson’s long time collaboration with video maker Mary Ellen Strom resulted in the creation of a number of single channel performance videos (“Madame 710”, “Sloss, Kerr, Rosenberg & Moore”, “Four Parallel Lines” among others) that are held in several private and museum collections.

 

Carlson has taught choreography and performance in universities around the US and Mexico, including Stanford, Princeton and Wesleyan Universities, as well as the University of Minnesota, and currently at UCLA and UC Riverside.

Downloads & Links

Other Artists You May Like