Called “gifted” by the New Yorker and “an elegant, sensitive thinker” by The New York Times, Aynsley Vandenbroucke has been creating dance in New York City since 2000.  Her work has been performed throughout the city (at the Chocolate Factory, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Danspace Project, CPR- Center for Performance Research, Dixon Place, Dance New Amsterdam, and Lincoln Center Institute’s Clark Studio Theater, among others) as well as in San Francisco, Philadelphia, Colorado, and Brazil.  She received the 2012 “Art & Action” award from Gibney Dance Center recognizing “an extraordinary artist who is also committed to taking action on behalf of the dance field.”  She was a 2014 fellow at The MacDowell Colony and in residence at Yaddo in 2012, 2013, and 2016. Her work has been supported by The Jerome Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, LMCC, The Mertz Gilmore Foundation, and an emergency grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.  Aynsley’s newest performance, And, will premiere at Abrons Arts Center March 30-April 2, 2017.

Aynsley and photographer Mathew Pokoik founded Mount Tremper Arts, a center for contemporary performance and visual art in the Catskill Mountains.  There she played a large role in the design and building of the studio performance space and served as artistic director and then co-curator until 2014. Mount Tremper Arts has been noted in ArtForum.com, The New York Times, The New Yorker and many others.

Aynsley has taught at Princeton University since 2011. There she has developed innovative courses at the intersections of dance, somatics, philosophy, and writing and has helped foster collaboration across arts disciplines.  A Laban Movement Analyst, she was on the faculty of the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies for five years where she also helped coordinate the yearlong graduate level certificate program.

Her writing on dance has been published in The Performance Club, The Brooklyn Rail, BOMBlog, and Movement Research Performance Journal. As a dancer she has worked with Liz Sargent Installations and jill sigman/ thinkdance. She graduated in 1999 from North Carolina School of the Arts where she studied on scholarship and was nominated for the Princess Grace Award. Her previous studies included intensive ballet and contemporary dance training at the Merce Cunningham Dance Studio and The Alvin Ailey American Dance Center in New York, ImpulsTanz in Vienna, The Ruth Page Foundation and Hubbard Street Dance in Chicago.