Full Biography of Aynsley Vandenbroucke

(Photo © Mathew Pokoik)
Aynsley Vandenbroucke grew up in Chicago and currently divides her time between New York City and the Catskill Mountains. She started dancing in ballet class and living-room-improvisations when she was very young. Her formal dance training included ballet and modern at the Ruth Page Foundation and Lou Conte Dance Studio (home of Hubbard Street) in Chicago. She spent summers studying on grants and scholarships at the Cunningham Studio, The Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, the American Dance Festival, and ImpulsTanz in Vienna. In 1999, she received her BFA from North Carolina School of the Arts where she studied on scholarship and was nominated for the Princess Grace Award.

When she was young, dance teachers told Aynsley that she liked to think too much to be a dancer. She thought about it and disagreed. But the supposed tension between being a thinking, creating human and being a dancer has continually inspired her to find her own way within the dance world.

While at North Carolina School of the Arts, she co-founded the Pluck Project, now an annual New York performance of graduating seniors. After NCSA, she quit dance for a while in order to get back in touch with her own reasons for dancing. She wanted to focus less on technique and success, whatever that meant. She realized the best way to find her own place within dance was to create her own company.

Her company, Aynsley Vandenbroucke Movement Group, works collaboratively using improvisation, drawing, writing, and discussion. They also do a lot of thinking. The company has self-produced performances at Lincoln Center Institute’s Clark Studio Theater, the Baryshnikov Arts Center, and ART/NY South Oxford Space. Dixon Place, the Brooklyn Museum, the DanceNow/NYC Festival and others have presented the company.

Aynsley has created homes within the dance world in two other primary ways. She is a Certified Movement Analyst on the faculty at the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies. Here, she gets to question, describe, write about, and dig into all experiences of movement. She is surrounded by people from all fields and walks of life who believe in the power of movement. Additionally, Aynsley and her husband, photographer Mathew Pokoik, founded and direct Mt. Tremper Arts, an arts center in the Catskill Mountains. Located near Woodstock and Phoenicia, MTA serves as a center for exploration within the fields of movement and photography. On wooded grounds with streams, gardens, and hiking trails, it is also a place in which to connect with the natural world.

Aynsley's approaches to dance and dance-viewing are influenced by her current practices of Zen Buddhism and Gabrielle Roth's 5Rhythms.