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ANIMAL Dance


ANIMAL Dance is a performance and production company, directed by Hanna Satterlee, based in Burlington Vermont. Our artistic work highlights the sentience shared between species, honoring the ephemeral language of the body in motion. Our curations and productions are designed to support independent artists, through informal and formal performances, artists' exchange groups, and classes and workshops.

INSTINCT DANCE FESTIVAL

Save the Date2025
ANIMAL Dance is excited to announce that the second ever INSTINCT Experimental Dance Festival is scheduled for 2025!

When: January 4-10
Where: Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center, Burlington VT
Performances: Saturday & Sunday, January 4-5 at the Black Box Theater
Workshops: Monday through Friday, January 6-10 (details announced later this fall)

Support
The 2025 Instinct Dance Festival is supported in part by a “Community Fund” grant from Burlington City Arts, and in part by a "Vermont Arts Project" grant from the Vermont Arts Council/National Endowment for the Arts/Vermont Community Foundation. INSTINCT 2025 would not be possible without support from our host sponsor Main Street Landing, as well as our Fiscal Sponsor Loom Ensemble.

Fundraising
We are 1/3 way there to our fundraising goal! Via Loom Ensemble, we are able to accept your tax-deductible donation to support this project. No donation is too small. Please be in touch if you are interested in making a tax-deductible donation or purchasing an ad for your business! instinctdancefest@gmail.com

About
INSTINCT Festival brings together experimental and interdisciplinary makers working between movement and other artistic fields for a week of workshops, showcases, and exchange. Experimental dance celebrates the weird, the wild, with an ever-changing definition of style and form. Experimental dance creates space for all types of expression, ranging from conceptual and abstract, to mythical story telling and poetic spirituality. It is a vehicle for investigation, understanding, and re-imagining the complexities of each moment. Through media, music, movement and mystery, experimental artists bring the human experience into an imaginative reality, to help us all remember to ask “What else is possible?”

CALL FOR ARTISTS!

communityapplication2025instinct

We are psyched this year to open applications for community members to apply to offer one-time events during the festival!

All applicants must be:

  • Based in New England. (Please note, housing and transportation is not provided.)
  • 23 years old and up.
  • Dance artists who are currently working in movement-based practices.
  • Proposals must be for a one-time event (workshop/informal showing/jam/etc), 1.5-2 hrs in length.
  • Individual artists, collectives, multi-artist collaboratives and companies are invited to apply!


Deadline: September 20th, 2024 at 11:59 pm EST.
No late submissions will be accepted.

There is a $200 stipend per offering. Three artists or collectives will be selected. Notifications will be sent out by end of day September 28th, 2024.

Find the application here, and submit no later than 11:59 pm on September 20th.

More Info

ANIMAL Dance Services

hands grabbing dark rock

ANIMAL Dance is available for Production & Consulting services as well as for performance projects. Please find more info here.

Follow ANIMAL Dance on Instagram @animaldancevt

History

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In 2015 an evening length piece titled “ANIMAL” was premiered, after a two year developmental process that included 15 public performance drafts in various locations with varying casts, costumes, and technical elements. When the show wrapped, I imagined the piece would transform into a company, and the animal-body-dance-language work could continue in new iterations, to tell new stories. After grad school, nonprofit management, lots of travel and various zigs and zags, that has finally become a realization instead of a dream!

Hanna Satterlee Productions

Woman looking out of window in black & white

Past productions, by formerly known "Hanna Satterlee Productions" Co. can be found here.

Image: Video capture from "Forget Me Not" by Andreas John

Archive

Major past productions, by ANIMAL Dance can be found here.
Others are listed below:

Tender Hearts

four women dancing on stage

An evening length dance performance that weaves together personal and mythical story. A tour of the human emotional experience through an abstract movement journey. Premiered in 2023.

More info here.

Gaga/People Class

group of dancers sticking their arms out

Taught by Maree ReMalia
Produced by ANIMAL Dance

This class teaches the Gaga movement language which originated from the belief in the healing, dynamic and ever-changing power of movement, developed by choreographer, Ohad Naharin.

Wednesday Sept 20, 12:00 - 1:00 pm
North Star Community Hall, Burlington, VT

More information on Vermont Dance Alliance.
Press release can be found here.

Art in the Garden Performance Tour

audiance sitting in garden

A collective of Vermont artists join together to offer an interdisciplinary immersive performance tour throughout the beautiful Horsford Gardens and Nursery grounds. A live theater and dance performance. An annual summer happening produced by Hanna Satterlee/ANIMAL Dance as part of the Horsford Art in the Garden series. Come delight! This performance was presented on Sunday, August 6, 2023.

See program here
Horsford Nursery and Gardens

LOOM Ensemble "Tell Me How You Breathe"

Hanna floating on hands
Photo by Lillian LaGrange with Loom Ensemble

Hanna Satterlee of ANIMAL Dance, directed a Vermont Dance Ensemble, that toured with Loom Ensemble during July 2023! Loom Ensemble, directed by Neva Cockrell and Raphael Sacks, created a musical about climate change:  "Tell Me How You Breathe" for outdoor parks in MA, VT and NY this summer. ANIMAL Dance produced their Montpelier and Burlington performances.

More info here.

Concentric Creatives

black concentric circles painted on paper

“Concentric Creatives” was a monthly showcase of new works by an interdisciplinary cohort of six professional Vermont artists of varying disciplines, produced by Jen Berger of At the Root and Hanna Satterlee of ANIMAL Dance.  From February through May of 2023, the public was invited to see new projects, listen while the Creative Cohort publicly discussed the work, and then join in the public conversation to ask questions and offer feedback.