Annalee Traylor

Annalee Traylor is a choreographer, director, and educator originally from Huntsville, Alabama. Her work blends dance, theater, sound, and stagecraft into tragicomic performances that create spaces for wonder, contradiction, and connection. Working collaboratively, she approaches creating as a practice of listening, guided by intuition and a curiosity about the mysteries that accompany being alive. Her work interrupts perception and defamiliarizes the ordinary, with the quotidian serving as a point of departure into the absurd, grotesque, and entropic.

 

Traylor’s choreography and directing work has been commissioned and presented throughout the United States and internationally, including in Los Angeles, New York City, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Italy, Portugal, and the Netherlands. Her work has been presented at venues including Battery Park, Green Space, Hudson Guild Theatre, New Hazlett Theatre, Ailey Citigroup Theater, Diavolo, Ferst Center for the Arts, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, Gibney, Center for Performance Research, and Highways Performance Space, among others. Recent commissions include Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, Kit Modus, Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre, and Theater Emory. Her work has been supported by residencies through 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 received the inaugural 2023–24 Emory Arts Fellowship in Dance.

 

As an educator, Traylor approaches the classroom as a laboratory—an active space for critical dialogue, experimentation, risk-taking, and collective discovery. She encourages students to cultivate curiosity, confidence, and an attunement to presence while developing their own creative voices. In 2026, she piloted Movement & Theatricality, a creative practice course bringing together theater and dance students at Western Michigan University, where she is a Visiting Assistant Professor. Her 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.

 

Earlier in her career, Traylor performed with the August Wilson Center Dance Ensemble from 2010–2013, dancing in works by Kyle Abraham, Robert Battle, Camille A. Brown, Darrell Grand Moultrie, Sidra Bell, Christopher Huggins, Kevin Iega Jeff, and Crystal Frazier. Additionally, she has freelanced with Pennington Dance Group, Clairobscur Dance, and slowdanger.

 

Traylor holds a BFA in Dance Performance from Point Park University and an MFA in Choreography from the California Institute of the Arts, where she received the S. Disney Lund Scholarship in Dance.  In 2018, she received a classical Pilates certification through Romana’s Pilates.