bio
‘ayo’ Alicia Ohs (A.O./they/she) is a director, performer, and socially-engaged artist interested in what makes people laugh, cry, and continue.
ayo is currently working on The Silent Unseen, a project tracing the history of Asian femme migration through untold stories and unheard voices, and featuring an audio tour linking early stories of Asian immigration with narration, originally composed music, and special guest speakers.
ayo has presented choreography, original songwriting, and spatialized audio compositions in NY and San Francisco, where their work was described as “feisty, clever and poignant” by the SF Bay Guardian.
ayo has performed and directed at venues such as the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Public Theatre, the Venice Biennale, the Walker Art Center, MOMA, Onassis Cultural Center Athens, among other national and international tours. they collaborated closely with Andrew Schneider on multiple projects (2017-2023) and worked with Faye Driscoll as an original collaborative cast member in the Thank You For Coming trilogy (2013-2018).
As an anti-racist organizer and somatic healer, ayo was a co-facilitator of Radical Love and Equity, a founding member of Movement Research’s Artist of Color Council, and the founder of Anti-Oppression Yoga, a network of free online videos and classes. ayo has worked in many community-based non-profits including the Audre Lorde Project under the direction of Healing Justice visionary, Cara Page.
They are a graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts’ Experimental Theatre Wing, and have studied Somatic Abolitionism with Resmaa Menakam and music production and vocal music at Berklee College of Music Online. ayo lives in Lenapehoking/Brooklyn.
community builder. director. sound maker.
photo by Maria Baranova-Suzuki