Bio
Vanessa Anspaugh, is a choreographer/performance based artist. She was born and raised in the unceded land of the Tongva & Chumash (also known as Los Angeles, CA) amongst an eclectic family of artists, affected by the vast urban landscape and Pacific Ocean. The numerous paradigms of paradox existing in Los Angeles in the 80’s and 90’s made vibrant and stark impressions on her as a meandering child of this particular time and place. In 2001, she relocated to New York where she based herself for the better part of the last two decades. As a performer, Anspaugh has worked for Taylor Mac, Sara Shelton Mann, Aretha Aoki, Faye Driscoll, Juliette Mapp, Robbinschilds, and devynn emory. She was deeply influenced by her one year with MGM GRAND (Modern Garage Movement) collaborating with Jmy Leary and Biba Bell with whom she toured the western coast and her collaborations with visual artists such as, SWOON, Every Ocean Hughes and Amber Bemak. She is a two-time Bessie Award Nominee for both Most Outstanding Choreographer (morning after mournings) of 2023 and Most Outstanding Production (The End of Men).
Her work has been commissioned and presented by The Joyce Theater, New York Live Arts, Danspace Project, Dance Theater Workshop, The Kitchen, The Rubin Museum, The Bates Dance Festival, The River to River Festival, The Sculpture Center, The Hessel Museum, Opera House Arts, Space Gallery, along with other national & international venues. Her work has been written about in multiple periodicals such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art Forum, The Brooklyn Rail, Forbes Magazine, The Huffington Post, The Movement Research Journal, and academic journals, such as Theatre Survey. In 2013, beloved dance champion Sam Miller (RIP) invited her to join the first cohort of the LMCC Extended Life Artist Grantee & Residency program where she worked closely with mentor Jennifer Monson.
Anspaugh has moved about as a visiting teaching artist with time at Bard, Smith, Bowdoin, Colby and Bates Colleges and looks forward to her time working at UT Austin developing a new work with students in 2025. Over the years her work has been supported by a number of the following organizations: The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, New England Foundation for the Arts, The Mellon Foundation, The Kindling Fund, New York State Council on the Arts; and New York Live ArtsLive Feed Residency program, supported in part by Rockefeller, Brothers Fund and Partners for New Performance, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, National Endowment for the Arts, The Kindling Fund, New England Foundation for the Arts, Dance NYC along with the generosity of a number of private donors and supporters.
Over the last several years, Anspaugh has made four new works, all under the subject of deaths that come too soon; Funerals for the Ocean, Early Mournings, Late Mournings and now mourning after mornings which premiered at New York Live Arts November 10-12. Collaborators for this work are: Anna Azrieli, Rebecca Serell, maura nguyễn donohue, Laura Osterhaus Rosenstone, Jo Warren, C Anthony-Green, Umechi Born, and Pia, along with composer Soraya Odishoo, lighting designer & Scenographer Kathy Couch, and dramaturgical support by Mike Mikos.
Collaborators on each of the other pieces include: Asher Woodworth, Molly McBride, Meredith Bove, Sonya Marx, Syd Schwartz, Maya Laliberte, Chloe London, Erin Kouwe, El Walton, Kati Payne, Nadia Granados, Caitlin Scholl, Allie James, Kristen Stake, Meghan Fredrick, Isa Pereira-Tosado, Isabella Kemp, Tegan Mara, Quinn Coolidge, Mara Kelly & Dramaturg Mike Mikos.
Artist Statement
What motivates my artistic practice and research is at first, my deep love of collaboration. I am drawn to facilitating spaces where a cacophony of voices coalesce and collide in creative process and conversation. In collaboration I hope we can help awaken audiences to their own personal and collective feelings of aliveness where we can make space for both: the sacred & the profane. I strive to create performances and contexts that more deeply connect people to the ecosystems we belong to, to one another, and to our wild embodiments containing multitudes; where joy, pleasure, subversion, and scrupulous care can be felt alongside chaos, grief, loss (leaving room of course for humor). I am not afraid to make messes. I am motivated to make work that asks questions, and lives inside of them while critiquing and portraying the gorgeous & ugly poetics of how culture lives in the body and not ON the earth but, part OF the biosphere. I want to make work that both in process & in presentation help us all to
WAKE UP.