Anya’s somatic interest began in the parallel spaces of dealing with tension as a concert pianist and dancing competitively as a salsa dancer. Transitioning gradually from partner dancing, she trained first in flamenco music and dance, with Alicia Marquez in Spain and Wendy Clinard in Chicago. As an artist-researcher she mixes somatic practice with sound research, with particular interest in listening to and sonifying the embedded history that the body carries.
Anya has trained in contact improvisation with various artists in Europe and N America (including Martin Keorg, Rick Nodine, Chisa Hidaka), in PlayFight with Bruno Caverna and Dasha Lavrennikov, in BMC with Christine Cole, in performance with David Brick and Ishmael Houston-Jones, in movement research with Jill Johnson and John Jaspers, in Butoh dance and music with Kea and Tivi-Tavi, in Axis Syllabus with Frey Faust and Kelly Keenan, in somatics improvisation with Tatyana Fateeva, in music-movement exchange with Jenny Haack, Julyen Hamilton, and Ian Spink, as well as in martial arts of Oom Yung Doe and Jiu-Jitsu. She has been researching embodiment in music-making in collaboration with Vijay Iyer and her PhD research with Peter Galison addresses embodied mathematics historically and today.
In a collaboration with a team of multi-disciplinary researchers in Chile, Anya has been developing embodied learning experiences that engage body’s embedded wisdom in the teaching and learning of science, namely: planet formation, embodied evolution, protein folding, and DNA replication. (see recreo.das.uchile.cl). Her performance practice combines sound and movement, usually as an invitation to witness real-time research about embedded history of objects, spaces, and “life”. in various genres, she has performed in W Europe, N America, N Africa, S America, Russia, Ukraine and Bulgaria. Her websites are temporarily on hold, but will be back up at anyayermakova.com and intenselistening.com
Anya Yermakova