ANNIE RIGNEY

Biography

Annie Rigney is a New York based dancer, choreographer, Gaga teacher and Ilan Lev Method therapist. Her choreographic interest and movement research lies in the intersection between extreme physicality and healing; In the conflict between the need for art to challenge and destroy and the simultaneous healing and uniting power of movement. Annie is an Alumnus of the Conservatory of Dance at SUNY Purchase. She danced with the Batsheva Ensemble under the artistic direction of Ohad Naharin, toured internationally with Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak Dance Company and was a cast member of Punchdrunk's immersive theater production, Sleep No More, from 2015-2019. In April, 2023 Annie premiered a new choreographic work, "Get Up, My Daughter," commissioned by and created for the Martha Graham Dance Company and presented at the Joyce Theater. Her choreographic work, “Galithea" was featured as a part of the 92nd Street Y’s Future Dance Festival and performed at the Joyce Theater. Annie was a guest choreographer for the Fall Concert at SUNY Purchase 2021, a recipient of the Moving Women Residency from Gallim Dance, a 2023 CUNY Grant recipient, and a choreographic fellow for Robert Battle's New Directions Choreographic Fellowship program at the Alvin Ailey School. Annie is a current Artist in Residence at the 92nd Street Y and premiered her recent evening-length work entitled, "...she was becoming untethered." at the newly renovated Buttenweiser Hall. She is an adjunct professor at the Alvin Ailey School and the SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance and teaches Gaga at Gibney Dance Center, and Mark Morris Dancer, among others.  She has been an Ilan Lev Method practitioner for 12 years and runs a private practice treating dancers and musicians for injuries and functional limitations.

I grew up in a household full of music. My father is a fiddle player and most of my childhood I was surrounded by sound, which made dancing an obvious choice for me. My time dancing with the Batsheva Ensemble under the direction of Ohad Naharin was incredibly formative and changed the way I see and make dance. We learn to move from our sensations and to let our skin, our flesh, our bones and our imagination bring the movement rather than working from a more shape-based or aesthetic place. Dancing with Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak introduced me to dance theater and using dance in a more narrative way. I also spent 5 years performing with "Sleep No More" in New York City, a massive immersive theater production in which the audience moves freely throughout almost 100 rooms, discovering an unfolding dance theater interpretation of MacBeth. Performing in immersive work really challenged my understanding of what performance can be and changed my relationship to live performance and to the stage. I've spent the last 14 years as a practicing Ilan Lev Method therapist, treating dancers and musicians for injuries, pain and trauma, and my work as a bodyworker and healer is a huge source of inspiration and meaning for my movement practice and for my choreography.

I love to get lost inside of a creative process. I love the act of not knowing and letting the dance reveal itself to me. I'm a huge believer in the "happy accident" and I love for the dancers to be generating alongside me and to work in a collaborative way. Teaching class and Investing in a shared movement language together in the room is very important to me. We develop the movement language, and then we "speak" the language on the stage. I'm a big believer that it's not what you do, but how you do it.

My entry point for this work was the music. In David Lang's "Just (after song of songs)" the music is lush, tender, and almost quaint. It speaks of a love story in a very sparse and minimalist way. It seems to imply that "just your skin, just your voice, just your eyes" is enough. But in love, it's never "just" anything. We all carry the emotional weight of previous experiences, memories, or the unseen weight of things not expressed. The dance explores the emotional basement, so to speak, that might exist between two people.