Ashley Hensel-Browning is a Vermont-based community artist and choreographer who works throughout the Northeast in a variety of settings, including schools, libraries, elderly housing facilities, and prisons. Ashley's work focuses on community development through movement, engaging various populations with creative risk-taking through exploration of the arts, specifically dance and choreography.
An avid performer, Ashley has most recently performed at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the Cunningham Studios in New York City, MassMOCA in North Adams, MA, and the Vermont State Dance Festival. She founded ZoAsh Dance, a modern dance company focused on exploring dance and performance in intimate spaces, with collaborator Zoe McDonnell and has hosted concerts in Cambridge, MA. They shared a show in February 2010 with Sam and Barbara Lloyd as part of the Green Mountain Festival Series. She has danced in works choreographed by Trisha Brown, Agnes de Mille, Elizabeth Bergmann, Nell Bryer, Jim Colemen, Terese Freedman, and Amie Dowling. Ashley serves on the Board of Directors for the Opera Theatre of Weston, where she both directs and choreographs operas such as Hansel and Gretel, The Little Prince, The Child and the Magic, and The Happy Prince. She is currently choreographing the company’s production of The Magic Flute and serves as an outreach educator, traveling to schools throughout Vermont to prepare students for their opera visits.
Ashley is a Juried Teaching Artist through the Vermont Arts Council and was recently chosen to be one of two Vermont Fellows for a tri-state project in VT, NH, and ME called Extending the Dance Map, an initiative to increase dance opportunities for students in rural schools. Ashley received her Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education at Harvard University where she studied arts education, education policy, and community organizing. She has worked as a teaching artist with Boston Ballet's outreach program CityDance where she taught in various public schools throughout Boston. Ashley currently teaches at the Dance Factory in Springfield, VT where she also runs a family dance class. She works with libraries to develop programs to explore literature and poetry through movement and is doing teacher training in the Berkshires in curriculum development through movement, focusing specifically on math curriculum. Ashley and yoga teacher Rebecca Salem have been awarded a grant to run multiple sessions of a yoga/dance program they co-designed. Ashley works with local high school students to develop independent studies exploring movement, dance history, and culture. She is also the Dance Director at Maine Arts Camp. Ashley received her B.A. from Hampshire College where she designed her own major in Dance Education and Community Development through the Arts.
Ashley Hensel-Browning