Annie Sailer Dance Company (New York) was established in 2001. Through natural movement and spatial relationships, generated by imagery, Sailer creates dances that evoke the unconscious. Her choreography is influenced by her life experience, Japanese aesthetics, and Nancy Meehan. There is a direct physicality and sense of weight to Sailer's movement. Her choreography has an understated quality that implies emotional and psychological states of mind. Like a cartoon, she intends her work to have an "over-the-top", slightly absurd, irreverent sensibility while simultaneously evoking dream-like narratives.

For the past two years ASDC has been performing structured improvisations that are directed by Sailer, but developed collectively by the company. The structures are non-frontal and bleed off the performing space in a way similar to her paintings. Movement sequences overlap, freeze in stillness, and are repeated or referred to in various groupings, facings, and locations. Costuming and occasional sculptural installations work as integral parts of each piece; sometimes generating content and sometimes, simply, providing an additional visual element to the choreography. The designs, colors, and forms refer to her paintings.

Annie Sailer Dance Company has performed in venues including space@anthology; the Williamsburg Dance Festival; WAXworks; Fielday at White Wave, HERE Arts Center, and Abrons Arts Center; Broome Corner Studio Choreographic Series; the Brooklyn Sampler at BRIC Studio; Fertile Ground at Green Space; and an evening length concert at Williamsburg Arts Nexus.

Annie Sailer is a dancer and a visual artist. She has been performing, choreographing, teaching dance, and painting since the mid-seventies. Sailer has a B.F.A. in Painting, an M.A. in Dance, and an M.A. in Studio Art. Her movement is based in the Hawkins technique. In 1974, following college, she moved to New York City to study dance with Nancy Meehan. From 1974 through 1985 she trained with Meehan and members of Erick Hawkins Dance Company. She performed with Nancy Meehan Dance Company in 1984 and 1985.

The Annie Sailer Dance Company has been in existence since 1983. Due to her husband's academic career, she has relocated several times throughout the U.S., each time building a dance company, receiving funding, and creating a performing presence.

Sailer has been teaching modern dance based in the Hawkins technique since 1978. She has taught and choreographed at George Washington University, Kenyon College, The University of Wyoming, the American Dance Festival, public schools, dance studios, including Annie Sailer Dance Studio in New Haven, CT and in Mount Vernon, Ohio. Her students have included professional dancers, non-dancers, college students, children, teens, psychiatric patients, and adults with Downs Syndrome. In addition to teaching dance technique Sailer teaches composition, improvisation, massage, body awareness and alignment.

In 2001 Sailer and her family relocated to New York City where she again established Annie Sailer Dance Company. ASDC members include Bob Beswick, Susan Golub, and Robyn Sandberg.

Video excerpts:

from life floating over a door
(performed in 2007 by Susan Golub, Annie Sailer, and Robyn Sandberg)
video artist: Valerie Green

Excerpt#1

Excerpt#2

DVDs and videos available upon request.

Annie Sailer is available for classes and choreography.

Annie Sailer Dance Company is available for performance.

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