B A N N I N G B O U L D I N
photo: Andrea Behrends
Banning is a dancer, choreographer, producer, and community organizer based in Nashville, TN.
She received her BFA from the Juilliard School in 2002, and spent the next decade performing internationally—working with Aszure Barton, Cullberg Ballet, Camille A. Brown, Mats Ek, Johan Inger, Hubbard Street, Lar Lubovitch, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Alexander Ekman, Jacquelyn Buglisi, Wen Wei Wang, and Robert Battle.
She was a soloist and choreographic assistant during her tenure with Aszure Barton and Artists from 2003-2010. In 2007, she began to research her own contemporary technique practice—developing an improvisation and non-binary partnering syllabus which she taught for two years at the Theatre de la Danse and Studio Harmonic in Paris. During that same time, she joined a small group of fellow Juilliard graduates to form Rumpus Room Dance, based in Portland, Oregon and Goteborg, Sweden. Together they co-created and performed two evening length site-specific dance works and were nominated one of Dance Magazine’s “Top 25 to Watch” in 2010.
In the Fall of 2010, Banning returned to her hometown, Nashville, where she was engaged as an instructor and choreographer for the Nashville Ballet and Vanderbilt University, developing the contemporary dance curricula for both training programs.
In 2013, Banning formed New Dialect—responding to Nashville’s need for a professional contemporary dance company and community-centric resource that would support dancers, teaching artists, and choreographers, while providing new opportunities for local dance artists to collaborate and contribute to the larger national dance ecology. As a community organizer and director, she since has nurtured the creation of numerous dance programs and productions in Nashville. Through her leadership of New Dialect and significant contributions to contemporary dance in the South, Banning has received several honors and awards, including a two-time nomination for the United States Artist Fellowship.
As a freelance choreographer, she has been commissioned to create works for Visceral Dance Chicago, Springboard Danse Montréal, Northwest Dance Project, Whim W'Him, SALT Contemporary Dance Company, the Juilliard School, Gibney Dance Company, Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing & Visual Arts (Dallas), Groundworks Dance Theater, the Fine Arts Center Greenville, Middle Tennessee State University, and New Dialect. She has been featured in articles and interviews for Dance Magazine, The New York Times, Dance Teacher, and Dance Spirit magazine.
Banning is currently a research artist for the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron, where she is investigating new frameworks for supporting dance through NCCAkron’s Creative Administration Residency (CAR). Her essay Causing a Scene: How I Helped Build the Contemporary Dance Ecosystem in My Hometown, details her experience forming New Dialect and will be published by the University of Akron Press in September 2024.
SELECT AWARDS
2014: honored with the Tennessee Dance Association’s Margaret Martin Award for her outstanding contributions to further the public image and accessibility of dance in Tennessee
2015: selected to participate in Springboard Danse Montreal's E-choreographers residency and winner of Northwest Dance Project's Pretty Creative international choreographic competition
2016: awarded Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Fellowship and nominated for a United States Artists Fellowship
2019: received Tanne Foundation Award
2019: selected to participate in Momentum, a touring-capacity accelerator run by South Arts and funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
2020: selected to participate in Creative Administration Research, a field study run by the National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron
2021: nominated for United States Artists Fellowship
