Aviya (she/her) - I am a multidisciplinary performance artist exploring intersections and waves of inspiration between movement, autobiography, comedy, sculptural installation, and Jewish ritual. I am grounded in my New York-Jewish ancestry and its reverberations into community-based activism, joke-work, and fierce love. Within my practice, I challenge myself to explore ritual and tradition in a contemporary, diasporic, queer, apocalypse-surviving, and anti-racist context. My creative practice is also informed by my teaching practice with young artists, primarily age 2-11 years old. Through working with children, I have learned to hold the bountiful harmony between seriousness and play.
My performance life began as a member of the Paul Taylor Teen Ensemble, performing throughout NYC under the direction of Reagan Wood. I have trained nationally and internationally, most notably with David Zambrano (NYC), Laura Aris (Vienna), Klever Viera (Quito, Ecuador), Kevin Williamson (LA), Ronit Ziv (LA), and Doug Varone & Dancers (NYC). I have performed in collaboration with Carmen Caceres DanceAction, Yehuda Hyman’s Mystical Feet Company, and The New Shul. I was a 2021 Artist in Residence at The Sable Project and a 2022 EmergeNYC Fellow.