Ann Carlson is an interdisciplinary artist whose work borrows from the disciplines of dance and performance as well as visual, conceptual and social art practices. Her work often dismantles conventional boundaries between artist and subject. Carlson’s work takes the form of solo
performance, large-scale site specific projects, ensemble stage-based dances and performance video. Carlson often works within a series format, creating performance structures over a period of years that adapt and tour to multiple sites.The most recent series includes The Symphonic Body; a movement based orchestral work made entirely of gestures. The Symphonic Body has had five iterations to date. Carlson has made a number of works collaborating with live animals in performance. The most recent animal series project is Doggie Hamlet, which includes a flock of sheep, four herding dogs and five human performers. Doggie Hamlet was performed in meadows adjacent to Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Jackson, Wyoming, Hanover, New Hampshire.
Carlson is the recipient of numerous awards and over thirty commissions for her artistic work. Her awards include a Creative Capital Award, a Doris Duke Award for Performing Artists, two American Masters awards, a USA Artist Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and a Fellowship from the Foundation for Contemporary Art. She also has had numerous awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and was the first recipient of the Cal /Arts Alpert Award in dance. Carlson has worked with Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass, Michael Stewart, Laurie Anderson among others. She has been a visiting faculty member at numerous universities, among them, Wesleyan, Stanford, and Princeton University and currently teaches at UCLA’s Dept. of World, Arts, Culture and Dance.