Dance Basel is a new dance festival in Basel during the Art Basel week. In collaboration with Theater Basel Public Foyer, this festival is free to the Basel public with a goal of showcasing the work of talented young choreographers in different stages of their development. Dance Basel is an inclusive festival is dedicated to establishing a high-quality platform, including minority choreographers, from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders and sexual orientations.

What are the challenges that you are facing?

Learning how to start and run a small dance company in the USA.  Maintaining a balance between staying home in Maine and traveling for work. Keeping a balanced state of mental health throughout all of that.

What gives you the most joy about choreographing a new piece?

I’ve been enjoying working and collaborating with other dance artists this past year.  It’s a pleasure to combine artistic minds and bodies through the work artists do together, and make something beyond what any of us could do alone. Dance is a social art and it only happens if you do it together.

What is your current inspiration?

Heather Stewart, my creative partner and Co-Director of little house dance is an inspiration.  We’ve started making stage choreography together for our dance company and I always enjoy featuring her in the videos I make. For the videos, I’m as much inspired by the type of thinking a dancer embodies through their movement as I am the way dancing makes a room feel.  I’m always looking for interesting spaces for dance to happen in and I think of the videos I make as much a moving portrait of a room as a portrait of someone’s movement inside of it. 

Are you working on something right now besides the Dance Basel Festival? If yes, what is it about?

Heather Stewart and I are directing a company called little house dance in Portland, Maine, USA.  Maine is my home state and it means a lot to me to help create stronger connections and foundations for dance to happen where we love to live.  Portland is a beautiful city with a great deal of art and we’re optimistic that we can contribute something meaningful to the state’s arts culture by creating paid work for dancers here.  Among other projects, we are gearing up to create an evening-length proscenium piece with a 13 member music ensemble called Palaver Strings to be premiered in the Fall of 2023.  We put out an international Call for Composers earlier this year and we’ll be collaborating closely with the chosen composer to write a new score for the string ensemble.  You can follow us on instagram at @littlehousedance