photo courtesy of the Community Engagement Lab
Ashley Hensel-Browning is dedicated to encouraging, questioning, and learning about dance in our communities and works as a dancer, choreographer, and teaching artist in Vermont. She believes in the power of movement to help us all become more aware, engaged and connected people.
She has received grants for her work in public schools and community sites from the Vermont Artist Council, New England Foundation for the Arts, and many local community councils. Her work focuses both on curriculum and community development through movement. Recent projects have included a teacher trainings, choreography residencies, outreach classes for the Vermont Dance Alliance, library programs that integrate literature and movement, and work with youth in restorative justice programs. She has worked as a teaching artist with the Community Engagement Lab as part of the Creative Schools Initiative. Past projects have included work at Boston Ballet's CityDance, dance in correctional facilities, family dance classes, and teaching dance at various summer programs. Ashley is a Juried Teaching Artist on the Vermont Arts Council Teaching Roster and can be hired for school residencies funded through the councils Artists in Schools grant.
photo courtesy of Jim Colemen
Ashley is an established choreographer and performer who has performed in works by Trisha Brown, Agnes DeMille, Elizabeth Bergman, Amie Dowling, Jim Coleman, Terese Freedman, and Nell Breyer in venues such the International Festival of Art and Ideas, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, MA, and MassMOCA. She regularly choreographs for schools, community events, and regional theaters in Vermont. She choreographed for many years with the Opera Theatre of Weston including productions of The Secret Garden, Noye's Fludde, The Magic Flute, The Little Prince, Die Fledermaus. She directed Hansel and Gretel, The Happy Prince, and The Child and the Magic.
Ashley received her Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and her B.A. from Hampshire College where she designed her own concentration in Dance Education and Community Development through the Arts.
Ashley is currently a teacher at the Dance Factory in Springfield, Vermont under the direction of Kate DeRosia. Ashley teaches ballet, modern, hip hop, and jazz. She directs and choreographs the studio's annual production of The Nutcracker and spring recitals and recently choreographed a new production of Peter and the Wolf that was performed with live music for over 600 students in southern Vermont.