The interdisciplinary artist and choreographer Ann Carlson views dance as any conscious movement in time and space. That expansive definition has led her to work with a wide range of participants – lawyers, basketball players, nuns, fly fishermen, college administrators, and a variety of animals – to turn their unconscious gestures into choreographed movements.  

She first arrived at UCLA in 2015 when the Center for the Art of Performance commissioned her to orchestrate a dance, part of a body of work she calls The Symphonic Body, and stayed on as a teacher in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance.  

She spoke to Works In Progress about her journey to developing her unorthodox approach to dance, her process of creating these large-scale works, and the idea of presence, a topic she’ll be exploring as part of “10 Questions: Reckoning,” the arts-driven initiative that brings UCLA faculty from across campus together to examine ten essential questions.