Victoria L. Awkward Defines “The Margin”
“This residency taught me to lead with joy and love—first for myself, then for others.” An Interview with 2023-2025 TTO Artist-In-Residence Victoria L. Awkward
In a rehearsal space thick with silk and possibility, Victoria L. Awkward holds herself in yards of white fabric. “I think of it like a portal,” she says, describing: In the Space Between (ITSB), a multi-disciplinary performance where movement, breath, fabric, and sound create a world that feels both imagined and ancestral.
Awkward calls the space she’s creating “the margin”—not something to escape, but something to inhabit. “At first I thought the ‘space between’ was the gap between reality and dream,” she says. “But I realized the space between is the margin. It’s the place where we thrive.”
Born in Massachusetts and trained at Impulse Dance Center under the expertise of LuAnn Pagella, Awkward came to dance through musical theater. “I realized my favorite part was the movement,” she recalls. “So I asked my parents if I could take dance classes—and they said yes, probably because I had so much energy.”
That energy would become the engine for VLA Dance, the company she founded in Boston. Yet it was during her residency with The Theater Offensive (TTO) that Awkward reshaped her approach to artmaking. “I was type A, pushing myself toward burnout,” she says. “This residency taught me to lead with joy and love—first for myself, then for others.”
The residency allowed her to build not only a work of art, but a practice of care. “I hired a director, a composer, a costume designer—a full team,” she says. “When I lead, I don’t feel alone. That’s care: creating space for others to lead, too.”
Her work resists boundaries. ITSB draws on original music by Aaron Brown, set design by NADAAA, lush costumes by Mitzi Eppley, and a cast of dancers who sing, breathe, and move like they’re channeling something beyond the material. “Dance is forward, but it’s not the only element,” she says. “This is about full embodiment.”
Her creative process is fed by writers like Audre Lorde and Alice Walker, long walks in Inwood Park, and the slow rituals of cooking. These practices, she says, help her feel alive in her body—a state she believes is vital. “If we’re not connected to our own bodies,” she says, “we can’t feel what’s happening in the world. Dance brings us back to presence. That’s the gift I want to offer.”
With In the Space Between, Victoria L. Awkward is offering a threshold: into care, into collaboration, into a world we can’t yet see, but somehow already remember.