Victoria Lynn Awkward is a multi-hyphenate creator, administrator, educator and the Director of VLA DANCE. Through her work she aims to inspire people to pause and reflect on their actions towards themselves, their community and their environment. She pursued her multiple interests at Goucher College and graduated with high honors in Dance, Visual Art and Secondary Education. Alongside directing VLA DANCE, Victoria is a freelance artist, who most recently choreographed for Huntington Theater, Company One Theatre, Boston Lyric Opera, and Commonwealth Shakespeare. Victoria is also an educator having worked at Salem State University, Brown University, West End House, Middlesex School, and Urbanity Dance. She continues to deepen her teaching practices as a mentee with Midday Movement Series. Victoria is currently a Brother Thomas Fellow, and recipient of the Next Steps for Boston Grant Dance Program as well as a recipient of the Queer (Re)public Theater Offensive Residency.

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"As a dance artist I'm seeking and creating freedom, community, comfort, safety, joy. 

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I love dance because it provides space to both ground my body in reality while also imagining my body’s new possibilities. I’ve witnessed the transformative power of dance, in how it causes me to pause and reflect on my actions towards my body, the people around me and the environment which I am in. I’ve come to understand dance as uniquely positioned to ignite this multi-layered focus because a dance class for example asks participants to be active within a rapidly changing environment through heightened awareness of their physical body, while dancing with others, and navigating shared space. 

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I’m invested in dynamic, rigorous and emotional dancing. I pull from training in Modern, Contemporary and diasporic performance practices. I am drawn to practices that provide space for futurism, where many forms of dance, art, creation and performance can align. I want my dancing to be something familiar, something my family and extended community can recognize even within its abstraction.

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It's through this lens that I strive to use my practice in contemporary performance as a pathway for both individual and collective liberation."