AUNTS is a roving platform for dance and performance based on the core values of inclusivity, collectivity, and resource sharing. The collective was founded by Jmy James Kidd and Rebecca Brooks in 2005, co-organized by Liliana Dirks-Goodman and Laurie Berg from 2009-2020, and is currently organized by jess pretty. 

AUNTS is a creative and collaborative performance project. Through the AUNTS apparatus, artists (from the NYC contemporary dance community and beyond) come together to share the same space at the same time, negotiating the simultaneous presentation of their work in relationship to one another. Often taking the form of an immersive live event, audiences are free to move through AUNTS, engaging with as many or as few of its offerings as they like, choosing their own path through the event and creating their own experiences through chance encounters. The whole could be viewed as a work independent from, but no more/less important than, its individual constituent parts.

Since 2005, AUNTS has organized over 80 events and hosted more than 600 artists from multiple disciplines at various points in their careers. AUNTS has organized pop-up performances and residencies at dozens of spaces all over NYC, nationally and internationally including The New Museum, Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, Whitney Museum, ACE Hotel, Pulitzer Arts Foundation (St. Louis, MO), Beach Sessions Rockaway, Berkeley Art Museum (CA), The Chocolate Factory, La MaMa, Movement Research, TAMTAMTAM (Berlin, Germany), NADA, The American Dance Festival, Chashama, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council @ Governor’s Island, and Arts@Renaissance a part of St. Nick’s Alliance (Greenpoint, Brooklyn).