A Little About Ladybird
Anna Drozdowski works with creative communities (along with neighbors in education, activism, urbanism and government) as
a curator, project manager, facilitator and producer.
CURRENT
Ladybird maintains an organizational partnership with the Bowerbird concert series--co-curating and producing activities under the moniker Thirdbird . Beginning with Blindspot, a festival of music and dance, Thirdbird works at the forefront of contemporary performance practices by hosting visiting artists such as: Xavier LeRoy, Klangforum, Bloom! Dance Collective, Eleanor Bauer, Clement Layes/Public in Private, Colony, Levi Gonzalez, Kasper Daugaard Poulsen, Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion as well as presenting local artists in the "Blind Date" improvisation series.
Anna led the adaptive re-use of the Neighborhood House into a black-box performance space at Christ Church in 2011. Building a subsidized rental program which continues to serve hundreds of artists annually through rehearsal and production engagements, she found a calling in care-taking for communities. Anna has worked with organizations such as: Headlong Dance Theater, Ballet Hispanico, The School of American Ballet, Nichole Canuso Dance Company, Team Office!, FringeArts, Swarthmore College, Emmanuelle Delpech, Karen Getz, Pasion y Arte Flamenco, the PHL Redevelopment Authority, University of the Arts and the Mural Arts Program at the Philadelphia International Airport. Anna directed Wilmington Works, a community and economic development non-profit which is part of the VT downtown program in 2015. Increasing giving to the organization and resources to the municipality through the acquisition of grants in excess of half a million dollars, she established relationships in the rural world which continue to serve her work in inviting artists to retreat from the city.
Her creative work has been supported by the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, Chicago Seminar on Dance and Performance, the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, the NEA Arts Journalism Fellowship at the American Dance Festival, Philadelphia’s Community Education Center, PA Commonwealth Speaker series and the Fulbright Program, through which she spent a year in residence at the Royal Danish Ballet. Anna has written for the Philadelphia Weekly, The Bournonville Daily, Philadelphia Dance Projects (where she was guest curator in 2010) and for Dance Advance in addition to co-founding Thinking Dance with Lisa Kraus. Performance documentation includes the work of Jonathan Burrows + Matteo Fargion, Dada Von Bzdulow as well as Headlong Dance Theater’s work with Tere O’Connor.
Anna holds a graduate degree in Performance Studies from the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU and enjoys cross-stitching curse words, dancing tango, and grocery shopping slowly.
CURRENT
- WHITE LAMA, a world-premiere theatrical collaboration directed by Nikki Appino in collaboration with Philip Glass.
- Teaching in the Socially Engaged Studio Art MFA program at the Moore College of Art + Design.
- FACILITATOR for Artists U, by heading up strategic planning workshops for individual artists. Since 2006 this work has served creative individuals and ensembles in Philadelphia and beyond.
- CURATOR for LoLa38, a creative place-making project centered at the intersection of 38th and Lancaster in West Philadelphia. This collaborative project of the People's Emergency Center CDC, Wexford Science + Technology and the Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation at Drexel University looks at the big "G" and little "g" of gentrification and how these are seen and felt at this nexus of the Promise Zone. Straddling the distance between the former University City High School parcel and the United Bank's adaptive re-use into a community and cultural space,we are learning what is needed in a rapidly changing landscape.
- PRODUCER of a new orchestral composition by David Lang played by 400 amateur and professional musicians on broken instruments. This new Symphony for a Broken Orchestra, commissioned by Temple Contemporary premiered in 2017 in collaboration with The Fund for the School District, Curtis Institute of Music, The Philadelphia Orchestra and hundreds of mummers, jazz band members, students, teachers, classical, hip hop and experimental musicians. In 2018 the instruments were repaired and returned to the schools, with physical and financial resources to support fixing into the future.
- CROSSING CHOIR project and production management inclusive of the KNEE PLAYS at the Annenberg Center/UPenn by Philip Glass and David Byrne and ANIARA a world-premiere collaboration of the Grammy award winning Crossing Choir and artists of Finland's Klockriketeatern which premiered in Philadelphia and toured to Helsinki and Haarlem/Netherlands.
- MANAGER: WIC WORK/SHOP which tells the story of the WIC Supplemental Nutriton program from a mobile museum (Philadelphia Public History Truck - a converted UHaul) and collects oral histories of people touched by WIC.
- PROVOCATEUR inviting artists and creative teams to embark on planning and production retreats in the green mountains of Vermont.
Ladybird maintains an organizational partnership with the Bowerbird concert series--co-curating and producing activities under the moniker Thirdbird . Beginning with Blindspot, a festival of music and dance, Thirdbird works at the forefront of contemporary performance practices by hosting visiting artists such as: Xavier LeRoy, Klangforum, Bloom! Dance Collective, Eleanor Bauer, Clement Layes/Public in Private, Colony, Levi Gonzalez, Kasper Daugaard Poulsen, Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion as well as presenting local artists in the "Blind Date" improvisation series.
Anna led the adaptive re-use of the Neighborhood House into a black-box performance space at Christ Church in 2011. Building a subsidized rental program which continues to serve hundreds of artists annually through rehearsal and production engagements, she found a calling in care-taking for communities. Anna has worked with organizations such as: Headlong Dance Theater, Ballet Hispanico, The School of American Ballet, Nichole Canuso Dance Company, Team Office!, FringeArts, Swarthmore College, Emmanuelle Delpech, Karen Getz, Pasion y Arte Flamenco, the PHL Redevelopment Authority, University of the Arts and the Mural Arts Program at the Philadelphia International Airport. Anna directed Wilmington Works, a community and economic development non-profit which is part of the VT downtown program in 2015. Increasing giving to the organization and resources to the municipality through the acquisition of grants in excess of half a million dollars, she established relationships in the rural world which continue to serve her work in inviting artists to retreat from the city.
Her creative work has been supported by the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, Chicago Seminar on Dance and Performance, the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, the NEA Arts Journalism Fellowship at the American Dance Festival, Philadelphia’s Community Education Center, PA Commonwealth Speaker series and the Fulbright Program, through which she spent a year in residence at the Royal Danish Ballet. Anna has written for the Philadelphia Weekly, The Bournonville Daily, Philadelphia Dance Projects (where she was guest curator in 2010) and for Dance Advance in addition to co-founding Thinking Dance with Lisa Kraus. Performance documentation includes the work of Jonathan Burrows + Matteo Fargion, Dada Von Bzdulow as well as Headlong Dance Theater’s work with Tere O’Connor.
Anna holds a graduate degree in Performance Studies from the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU and enjoys cross-stitching curse words, dancing tango, and grocery shopping slowly.