​about slowdanger
slowdanger is a multidisciplinary performance entity founded in 2013 by co-artistic directors and life partners, anna thompson and taylor knight, creating work at the intersection of dance, sound, and technology. The name, slowdanger, was inspired by the Pittsburgh road signs that signify a demolition of old surfaces to build upon the remnants. We return to this overarching concept cyclically in performance creation; rebuilding, slowing down to examine the remains and re-imagine new futures.
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As a queer non-binary organization, slowdanger deconstructs gendered binaries in how audiences view and engage with performance and performers. In our process, we actively reorient the body and its relationship to power structures, architecture, conflict, emotion and sound. This queer world building practice creates form and instigates movement through situating the work in a defined sense of place, texture and embodied action.
We generate a multidisciplinary continuum in the creation of work through the enmeshment of sound, movement, and media. In sound, the body exists live and in memory through the recording and amplification of noise, beats and ephemera captured from a bodily enmeshment with technology. In dance, the body and its somatic technology is the meeting ground for metabolizing politics into form, feeling, and archetype. In visual and scenic, the space is a body, an extension of flesh rendered visible in its absence.
slowdanger’s foundational goal is to cultivate further embodied intelligence within a largely disembodied society caused by the dominance of white supremacy and patriarchal systems. We believe a lifelong pursuit of deepening individual and collective awareness is essential in examining and unpacking generational trauma. We create space for intersectional communities within the building and sharing of new performance works and programming initiatives. Within these programs, slowdanger creates experimental and unexpected entry points for audiences to connect with themselves, and question how their body overlaps with broader social, energetic, systemic and environmental spheres.
We decentralize hierarchical and individualistic power structures often in place within the creation of performance; implementing horizontal systems of making and collaborating through assembling interdisciplinary advisory committees, creating collaboratively co-devised ensemble work, facilitating open level movement workshops and designing bibliographic companions for touring performances. The act of interdisciplinary and intersectional collaboration are modalities that cultivate “scenius” or collective genius and decentralize our sole perspectives as experts on the work. Our interdisciplinary practice metabolizes the complexities of our world, allowing for multiple truths to emerge as we interface with the ephemeral.
slowdanger's performance work has been shared internationally in venues ranging from proscenium theaters and galleries to nightclubs and dive bars. From engaging a multi-channel sound installation to teaching dance at a queer rave in the woods, we transform our shape to adapt to a variety of different containers. In addition to our work as dancers, choreographers, and dance educators, we develop soundscores for theater, dance, film and virtual reality projects, perform and tour as musicians and DJs, and act as interdisciplinary movement consultants for actors, musicians, and architects. We do not seek answers, only more questions. We fail, constantly, and try to celebrate those moments as an effort in practicing resilience and imagining a world that is not yet possible.
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Their performance or sound work has been experienced or featured at The Carnegie Museum of Art, Place Des Arts, Usine C, Université du Québec à Montréal, Dance Place, The Andy Warhol Museum, The MoMA, The Martin E. Segal Theater CUNY Graduate Center, Kahlon, VIA Festival, Honcho, Hot Mass, The Pittsburgh Biennial, BAAD!, Triskelion Arts, The New Hazlett Theater, The Kennedy Center, Springboard Danse Montreal, and more. They have facilitated workshops at/for Lionsjaw Dance and Performance Festival, Carnegie Mellon University, The Carnegie Museum of Art, Booker T. Washington HSPVA, Pittsburgh Ballet Theater, Sidra Bell Dance New York MODULE, Gibney, Painted Bride Arts Center, BAX, The Mattress Factory Museum, Slippery Rock University, Middlebury College, and more. From 2020-2025 anna and taylor were Adjunct Modern Dance Faculty at Point Park University Conservatory of Performing Arts.
In 2018, slowdanger was one of Dance Magazine’s ‘25 to Watch’ and emerging choreographers for Springboard Danse Montreal. They have been in residence at Dance Place, Sidra Bell Dance New York’s MODULE, PearlArts Studio’s Pearl Diving Movement Residency, The Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh’s F.I.N.E. Residency, The New Hazlett Theater’s CSA Series, and Kelly Strayhorn Theater’s FreshWorks Residency. In 2019, they were Creatives in Residence at The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University and Performers in Residence at the Carnegie Museum of Art. In 2020 they debuted for shadowing for the Kennedy Center as a part of the Arts Across America Digital Stage. In 2021, they premiered an immersive virtual reality headset experience at the Kennedy Center’s the Reach for Extreme Length’s LENS and National Dance Day. They premiered weighted sky at the Warhol Museum in 2021, a work built collaboratively with Michiyaya Dance’s Anya and Mitusko Clarke-Verdery and Baltimore queer club legend Abdu Ali. In 2023, they performed with legendary Harsh Noise outlets Black Leather Jesus, The Rita and Thin Mountain on their European Tour. slowdanger were Artists in Residence at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland 2022-2023 where they developed their work SUPERCELL, for which they were awarded a NEFA National Dance Project Production Grant and an NPN Creation and Development Fund Award. The work was named a Must-See by Dance Magazine and premiered at the Clarice in 2023 and toured the U.S. through Spring 2024. In 2024 anna and taylor were the Inaugural New Work Development Artists in Residence at Texas A&M's College of Performance, Visualization and Fine Art to develop their newest work STORY BALLET which is set to premier in 2026, with touring engagements into 2027. In 2025 they presented their modular work ABYSS at the Smithfield-Liberty Parking Garage in Pittsburgh as a part of the Three Rivers Arts Festival. Recently, they traveled to Helsinki and Kajaani, Finland to begin development of REBEL BODIES, a multi-year collaborative project with Finnish multidisciplinary artist KM Taavitsaisen.
slowdanger has been supported by The New England Foundation for the Arts NDP, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, NPN Creation and Development Fund, New Music USA, The Heinz Endowments/Pittsburgh Foundation Investing in Professional Artists Award, The Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Special Presenters Initiative with Dance Place, Opportunity Fund, The Pittsburgh Foundation Andrew W. Mellon Grant, The PNC Charitable Trusts, The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership and The Heinz Endowments Small Arts Initiative.
