Photo by Lynn Lane
Director Annie Arnoult has been teaching modern and ballet in studios, universities and professional companies for over 25 years. Annie is a Certified Cecchetti Ballet teacher who trained at the Houston Ballet Academy, Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance and the American Dance Festival. She has a BA in Dance and Comparative Literary Studies from Northwestern University and an MFA in Dance from The Ohio State University. She has served on the dance faculty of Northwestern University and The School of Theatre and Dance at University of Houston. Her past students have gone on to study dance at Juilliard, Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, University of the Arts and the Laban Center in London. Annie is a member of the National Dance Education Organization.
Arnoult is the founding artistic director of Open Dance Project where she directs the company’s professional performance season and oversees the company’s extensive dance education work. Arnoult returned to her native Houston from Chicago where she was the artistic director of Chicago’s Striding Lion Performance Group, garnering acclaim for the company as a “new center of gravity for indie dance in Chicago.” Arnoult was named one of the “25 to Watch 2018” by Dance Magazine, citing her “keen attention to detail” and was a 2017 recipient of Houston Arts Alliance Individual Artist Grant for the development of the critically acclaimed ‘Bout a Stranger, deemed one of the “most fully realized pieces to come out of Houston in decades,” by Nancy Wozny in Dance Magazine.
Arnoult’s creative work is deeply informed and influenced by her 25 years as an artist teacher and integrated arts education advocate in Chicago Public Schools, HISD, and surrounding districts. Arnoult is the director of Hunter Dance Center in the Heights and has been a guest artist/teacher at universities, festivals, conferences, and institutes throughout the U.S. Arnoult is a Certified Cecchetti Ballet teacher and a member of the National Dance Education Organization. Her research and choreography has been presented regionally and internationally.
In addition to performing in her own work, Arnoult is a member of Houston’s Transitory Sound and Movement Collective, under the direction of Lynn Lane, and has danced for Meghan Durham, Ashley Thorndike-Youssef, XSIGHT! Performance Group, Lucky Plush Productions, Peter Carpenter, Asimina Chremos, and Billy Siegenfeld’s Jump Rhythm Jazz Project.