Abby Zbikowski creates contemporary dance works that pay homage to the effort of living, tactics of survival, and the aesthetics produced as a result, utilizing the physical aspects and psyche-emotional experience of her rigorous training background in African and Afro-diasporic forms, as well as playing sports and performing requisite acts of manual labor. She founded her company, Abby Z and the New Utility, in 2012 and received the 2017 Juried Bessie Award for her “unique and utterly authentic movement vocabulary in complex and demanding structures to create works of great energy, intensity, surprise, and danger.” In 2018 Dance Umbrella UK awarded her a “Choreographer of the Future” commission and is the recipient of a 2020 United States Artists Fellowship. Abby has created commissioned work for the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, as well as numerous universities nationally. She is an inaugural Caroline Hearst Choreographer-In- Residence at the Lewis Center of the Arts at Princeton University, current artist in residence at New York Live Arts, and has been in residence at Bates Dance Festival, American Dance Festival, and the STREB Lab for Action Mechanics. She currently an Associate Professor professor of Dance at The Ohio State University and has been on faculty at the University of Illinois and the American Dance Festival. She has taught at the Academy of Culture in Riga, Latvia; at Festival Un Pas Vers L’Avant in Abidjan, Ivory Coast; and studied at Germaine Acogny’s L’École de Sables in Senegal. Her company has been presented nationally, performing at venues such as Jacob’s Pillow in Becket, MA, and the Fuse Box Festival in Austin, TX, among others. Join Associate Professor of Dance and founder of Abby Z and the New Utility, Abby Zbikowski, for a conversation about creative process and dance research.
All are welcome to these free discussions, but please register to attend on Zoom>
