VISION

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Across dance, theater, sound, and stagecraft, Traylor devises performances that interrupt perception and defamiliarize the ordinary. The tragicomic worlds she constructs with collaborators are inhabited by idiosyncratic characters and driven by situations where contradiction and symbolism accumulate. The quotidian becomes a point of departure into the absurd, grotesque, and entropic.​​​

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HISTORY

 

Traylor’s choreography has been commissioned and presented throughout the United States and internationally, with performances in Los Angeles, New York City, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Italy, Portugal, and the Netherlands. Her work has been seen at venues including Battery Park, Green Space, Hudson Guild Theatre, New Hazlett Theatre, Ailey Citigroup Theatre, Diavolo, Ferst Center for the Arts, American Dance Festival’s Movies by Movers, Mass MoCA’s MassPODIUM, Kelly Strayhorn Theatre, Gibney, and Highways Performance Space, among others.

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Her work has been supported by The Goat Farm, Dance Lab NY, the UNCSA Choreographic Institute, Highways Performance Space, Kennesaw State University, Callanwolde Fine Arts Center, Dance Gallery Festival, and Emory University, where she was awarded the inaugural 2023–24 Emory Arts Fellowship in Dance. Traylor was also awarded Outstanding Choreographer at the Youth America Grand Prix semifinals. Recent commissions include Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, Kit Modus, and Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre.​

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EDUCATION​

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As an educator, Annalee approaches pedagogy as an interdisciplinary and collaborative practice grounded in embodied inquiry, creative research, and experimentation. She views the classroom as a laboratory, an active space for critical dialogue, risk-taking, and collective discovery, where students are encouraged to cultivate curiosity, confidence, and attunement to presence.​

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Currently, she is Visiting Assistant Professor in the School of Theatre and Dance at Western Michigan University. Additional guest teaching credits include UNCSA Summer Dance, Callanwolde Fine Arts Center, Reinhardt University, Core Dance, California Institute of the Arts, Carnegie Mellon University, Sam Houston State University, Point Park University, Dekalb School of the Arts, and Pittsburgh CAPA, among others. 

 

 

                                                              BIOGRAPHY

 

Originally from Huntsville, Alabama, Annalee Traylor is the daughter of two artists — a musician and a dancer — who nurtured and supported her creative life from an early age. She attended the Alabama School of Fine Arts and received her high school diploma from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Traylor earned her BFA, cum laude, from Point Park University.

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Following graduation, she joined Pittsburgh’s August Wilson Center Dance Ensemble for three years before freelancing with companies including Pennington Dance Group, Clairobscur Dance, and slowdanger, among others. She later received her MFA in Choreography from California Institute of the Arts as a recipient of the S. Disney Lund Scholarship in Dance. She holds a classical Pilates certification through Romana’s Pilates.