ANITA KAYA is a freelance choreographer, performer and curator, based in Vienna. She studied experimental theatre in Vienna at the Dramatisches Zentrum Wien, contemporary dance in Vienna, Germany, Italy and New York (study grant BMUKK) and Movement Analysis and Notation at the Austrian Society for Dance Therapy. 2019/20 she completed the university course Curating in the Scenic Arts/University Salzburg/Munich.
Since 1984 she has been working as a dancer / performer / choreographer in dance and theatre productions, a.o. directed by Ruben Fraga and Nigel Charnock, and was co-founder and member of several theatre and dance collectives. Under the label OYA-Produktion (1988–2005) she created twelve feature-length dance productions, numerous (site-specific) performances, installations and two dance videos in artistic cooperation with artists from various fields, performed at festivals and venues in Austria, Mexico, France, Italy, Finland, Germany, Hungary, USA/New York.
In 2000 she initiated the artists-for-artists association Im_flieger – research laboratory for dance, performance and transmedia art (concept founding of the city of Vienna 2022-25), and in her function as artistic director in collaboration with other artists she is developing new core concepts and structures of artistic cooperation and mentoring programs: e.g., the European residency program for young choreographers TERRAINS FERTILES 05 (Bucharest/Vienna/Paris) which was awarded the innovation prize 2005 by IG-Kultur Wien; the international dance-exchange program CHANGING SPACES, and the festival CROSSBREEDS – platform for artistic positions in-between at the interface of performing and visual arts or recently SCHULE@Im_flieger. Her essential interest is to create and enable prefigurative spaces for artistic exchange and encounter.
She enjoys working in transmedia, collaborative settings in the fusion of artistic practice and theory, and is part of the artistic research cluster STOFFWECHSEL-Ecologies of Collaboration. She is engaged with the body as a store of individual and collective memory, and its potential for communication with the environment, the human and the more-than-human: e.g. Translocations / One-to-One Performance moved at the interface of historical research, trauma, archiving, installation and performance. Her recent physical practice is based on meditation and somatic practices. In 2023 she cooperated with Theatercombinat / Claudia Bosse as a performer as part of the production Bones & Stones.
She is co-editor and co-author of the publication VISCERAL FICTION - Im_flieger writes history - 20 years of artists for artists. 2021, monochrome.