ɅVɅ DANCE COMPANY is an independent dance company created in 2008 as a dance laboratory to fulfil the artistic vision of choreographer Avatâra Ayuso. The company creates high-quality contemporary dance works, with a cast of female dancers and collaborators from a range of cultures and artistic disciplines, mainly; architecture, poetry, lighting design, music and costume.
Our priority is to create the context for a culturally diverse team of artists and organisations to interact with Avatâra in any given project, using dance as the connecting discipline, in this sense, we are a non geographically committed structure, working in partnership and getting funds internationally. We believe in dance-making as a never-ending creative process of movement investigation, expressing ideas through a visceral physicality of the body, opening its full range of emotional possibilities.
Avatâra Ayuso is one of the most creative thinkers in modern dance today.
Graham Watts - DanceTabs
Firecracker talent, her work is hectic and explosive ... starkly, vividly alive.
Luke Jennings (The Observer)
A committed feminist, Ayuso is one of a new generation of womendetermined to push female creativity to the forefront of dance.
Culture Whisper, Teresa Guerreiro (UK)
Avatâra is a delightful dancer, able to embody both elasticityand roughness with power and conviction; irresistibly alluring.
Laura Dodge (Dance Critic)
Highly intelligent, creative and full of vitality.
Teresa Guerreiro (CultureWhisper)
Riveting perfectly-calibrated solo 'angel', there is something mimetic about it
Donald Hutera (Dance Writer UK)
Excellent Provisional Landscapes prog at S adler's Wells Lilian Baylis: hard-core & thought-out. Congratulations!
@Donald Hutera
The company’s production values are already first-class, ranging from a well-designed programme to simple and effective visual stage effects
Graham Watts (Londondance)
What I like of AVA Dance Company is Avatâra's intelligence, wit; there's purpose to moves instead of arbitrariness or excess
@Donald Hutera
Ayuso is clearly comfortable working in a neoclassical language and with Evidencia she stakes a claim to be in the sightlines of ballet companies looking for inspirational women choreographers
Graham Watts (Dancetabs London)
Undoubtedly captivating
Laura Dodge (DanceMusings)
The two most polished pieces both came from the fertile mind of Avatâra Ayuso. In constant conflict with its deliberately infuriating voiceover, the astonishing Estela Merlos contorted her body into all sorts of vicious positions. Balikbayan grabbed the attention and kept it rapt
Gerald Davis (Showtime)
Ayuso embodies a powerful sexuality that feels both enticing and dangerous; it is impossible to take your eyes off this effervescent siren
Troy Holmes (Broadway Baby)
Ayuso makes use of a wide choreographic material which she manages to blend in a unique way... the authenticity of the movements and images convince us completely
Boris Michael Gruhl (Tanznetz)
Avatâra Ayuso’s work conjures up a visceral strength of conviction in her practice
Antonio Molina (Spain NOW!)