Dance for Camera Projects
Aimee McDonald,
Artistic Director
Aimee McDonald is based in Michigan, USA, and is Artistic Director of Terpsichore Collective and producer of Dancing in Summer, The Festival, which is three days of events featuring professional showcases, master classes, film screening, and an open choreographers showing. Aimee headed Terpsichore's Kitchen from 1998-2009, producing the annual Dancing in Summer choreographic showcase, as well as a series of showings and performances. Her work has been shown in the United States, Edinburgh, Scotland, and Montreal.
In 2023, after an extended hiatus from the stage due to motherhood and recovery from an auto accident, she returned as both choreographer and dancer for live stage work and screendance projects. Since relaunching the reimagined company in April 2023, her works have been shown in Terpsichore Collective produced showings, Detroit Dance Collage Festival, Detroit Dance City Festival’s professional showcase, RAD Fest, Ann Arbor Dance Network Launch Event at Ypsi Freight House, Shape//Matter Showcase, the Fieldworks dance festival presented by New Industry Dance in South Bend Indiana, Roots Choreography Showcase in Cleveland, Ohio, annual NACHMO S.E. Michigan concerts, and at Dance Uprising’s choreographers showing in Ann Arbor, as well as at Dancing in Summer, The Festival, and at Terpsichore Collective’s annual autumn concerts.
As Artistic Director she oversees the ChoreoLab Project, connecting emerging to accomplished choreographers with dancers and rehearsal space, and providing a produced performance platform to showcase their works. She has danced for numerous independent choreographers. With Terpsichore Collective she has performed works by guest artist, Peter Sparling, and is honored to be performing Martha Graham’s seminal work Lamentation on the Terpsichore 2026 season program.
Aimee’s work often explores orientation of the self and seeking belonging in place and time. In building the sense of different worlds she often designs and constructs costumes and utilizes fabric to bring color, texture, and connotation of character and era to her works.
In moving into the area of Screendance/Dance for Camera, she has worked with Peter Sparling, Cara Hagan, and Mitchell Rose. In 2024 she co-directed with Teri Sarris the documentary Local Movement: Five Decades of Dance in Ann Arbor, commissioned by the Ann Arbor District Library. She is a founding member of Ann Arbor Dance Network. Aimee received her BFA in Dance from the University of Michigan and is also a GYROTONIC® and GYROKINESIS® Master Trainer.
Artist Statement
Through my work I strive to orient myself in time and place, exploring memory and identity. In her book The Creative Habit Twyla Tharp asks the reader ”who is your muse?” Upon reading this I wondered “Is it okay to be my own muse?”, not out of any self importance or indulgence, but in that I recognized that my work is made of deeply personal reflections on my own emotional experience. I hope that the viewer can feel those emotions, many without name, and feel something familiar from their own life. My work is not literal. I believe dance says what words cannot. If I wanted to give you a literal narrative I would write it for you. I hope that through dance we can bypass language and go straight to things for which words aren’t enough.
It's important to me that an audience has the opportunity and experience of being transported into a different world that exists within the performance. Each element must be thought through, so that nothing pulls them back to daily life and thoughts until the performance has finished. This is why costume, environment (whether stage or site specific), lighting, transitions, and other details must be carefully considered.