The Known Mass project is facilitated by Ann Glaviano.

Contact Ann at annglaviano@gmail.com.

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about Ann, dancewise

Ann Glaviano is a writer, dance-maker, DJ, and born-and-raised New Orleanian. Since 2013 Ann has directed the New Orleans-based performance project Known Mass, which is an ongoing collaboration between New Orleans dancers and artists in other disciplines, aesthetically and ethically motivated by devised theatre and DIY punk traditions. Ann recruits professional dancers, the ultra-classically trained and the twenty-first-century contemporary weirdos, to perform alongside Ultimate Frisbee athletes and roller-derby bruisers; she invites musicians who are typically more oriented to the rock-venue scene to create lush noisescapes for the dancers to inhabit. The resulting pieces tend to be preoccupied with community – how it’s built and how it’s dismantled – and foreground the fine line between the banal and the absurd, playing out with both humor and poignancy what the writer and dance-maker Deborah Hay calls “the full, the sensuous, and the completely unremarkable.” From 2013 to 2021 Ann has produced and directed 12 collaborative projects with local dancers, musicians, photographers, filmmakers, and visual artists. In 2018, in recognition of her cross-disciplinary artistic achievements and track record of art community facilitation, Ann was honored as one of Gambit’s 40 Under 40.

As a freelance dancer Ann has performed with the New Orleans Ballet Theatre and the New Orleans Opera Association, among many others. She choreographed for Hulu’s television show The First, an episode directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven (Mustang). Her dance film 01_fieldrecording had its world premiere in January 2019 at Highways, an experimental performance art venue in Los Angeles, selected for the inaugural event of their MOTION CAPTURE series. In February 2019 she was an Associate Artist in Residence with the legendary dance-maker and writer Deborah Hay at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. In March 2019 her solo work was presented at COAST DANCEfest in Ocean Springs. In September 2019 she performed in a dystopic faux-corporate durational art installation in Dresden, Germany. Currently Ann is an artist-in-residence at the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, part of an artist-led collective of solo choreographers called reFRAME, with a commission funded by South Arts.

A student of Karl Rogers, Eric Nordstrom, and Deborah Hay, Ann hosts and guest-teaches classes and jams in New Orleans and beyond. She administered the (currently on hiatus) Vector Series of technique, improv, and phrasework classes for professional dancers through Known Mass.

Volunteer contributions to the New Orleans dance community have included a writing and analysis project, NOLA Dance Reader, and Dance in NOLA, an online catalog of weekly classes, auditions, workshops, and other resources for local adult dancers that Ann maintained from June 2013-April 2015. She initiated the Contact Improv New Orleans group and served as site editor for the New Orleans Dance Network in its inaugural year.