Vanessa Anspaugh, is a choreographer living and making work in Western Massachusetts. She spent the better part of the last two decades rooted as a dance artist in New York where most of her opportunities have taken place. As a performer, Anspaugh has been influenced by her work with Taylor Mac, Faye Driscoll, Juliette Mapp, devynn emory, Aretha Aoki and collaborations with visual artists such as, SWOON, Emily Roysdon 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, The Kitchen, The Rubin Museum, The Bates Dance Festival, among others. Her work has been written about in multiple periodicals such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Art Forum. Anspaugh loves working with SCDT and all of their many rich programs. She is looking forward to showing an excerpt of something old or new (tbd)at the first HUT of the season.

“I am a choreographer who works through visual, somatic, and conceptual languages in an effort to facilitate emotional, political, and relational dance works. I want my work to quietly provoke and unabashedly connect people to personal and collective feelings of aliveness and queer embodiments; where joy, pleasure, subversion, and scrupulous care can live alongside chaos, grief, humor and simplicity. I am motivated to make work that asks questions, and lives inside of them while critiquing and portraying the ugly & gorgeous poetics of how culture lives in the body.”