Akane is laying on a chair with one half of their body and floating in the air with the other half.
photo by Benja Thompson

Akane Little is a Brooklyn-based dance artist approaching the body and performance as an altar-portal for transmuting energy and channeling worlds. They started off in competition dance in a small-town studio in Mississippi, and continued on to study contemporary dance under Alysia Ramos at Oberlin College.

They have freelanced in both Cleveland, OH (Catherine Meredith, Megan Young, Rebecca Burcher, and more) and New York City (Kinesis Project, Boy Friday, Hivewild, Hard/Femme Dances, God Complex x Aeon Andreas, Nick Brooke, Michael Chinworth, Chaesong Kim, Bridget Kearney, Carolina Oliveros, and more). Since 2023, they have been a core member of the LEIMAY Ensemble under the direction of Ximena Garnica & Shige Moriya.

They approach each production as an altar, set with uncanny objects and activated by the choreographic disciplines of Western contemporary dance, ballet, drag, lip sync, competition dance from the Bible Belt, and Butoh. Their altars ring with hyper-specific sonic references that tether the work to conscious realities, and hold tender narrative arcs that are dimensionally deepened by the slippage between humor and horror.