About

i am a performance maker (collaborator, contributor, director, improvisor, choreographer, dramaturge, performer), teacher (enthusiastic nourisher of cultural futures), researcher (threading, uncovering, expanding), and partner (in conceiving, thinking, imagining, materializing, enacting; in matters of ephemerality and grit).

The work i am a part of becomes through a commitment to pouring RIGOR, and COMPASSION into every crevice of cultural production.

my efforts traverse art forms, genres, disciplines, institutions, and sectors.

i began devising performance work in 2003. Since then, i have been fortunate to partner with esteemed colleagues to generate more than thirty long form and short form works. Highlights include Un/Nameable One, Two, Three co-created with sha Harrell, Gema Corredera, Sevim Abaza, and Daniel Bernard Roumain (originally commissioned by Miami Light Project for Here & Now); A Symphony Apart, orchestral installation by Musicians of the Charlotte Symphony (made possible by Ben Geller and Lydia Bittner-Baird); Surplus Reiterations Exhibition, a set of gallery interventions created in collaboration with Tom Scicluna and Rod Faulds, at FAU’s Ritter Art Gallery and Schmidt Public Space; Some Ways to Continue?, long form performance installation for UCLA’s Room 200 co-created with every person that walked into the space, as well as UCLA graduate and undergraduate student communities, and the technical and production teams at World Arts and Cultures/Dance; and several early collaborations with Berlin-based artist, Ilana Reynolds.

Recent projects include Here, Now, an improvisational duet with Daniel Bernard Roumain for Miami Light Projects’ 2023 Here & Now Festival, a long form performance in response to Carol Jazzar’s Last Call, New Glory installation (September 2023), and a Rite of Spring excerpt solo for/in collaboration with Taylor Shirk (UM Frost School of Music Student), and the 2024 Stamps Brass Quintet (April 2024).

my deeply physical performance renderings emphasize abstraction (transmuting wisdoms as they come through the body), intimacy (striving to source the marrow of the marrow), and a reverence for lived experience/s. my approaches to so-called ‘making’ are outgrowths of the faith, resourcefulness and unflinching courage of my immigrant family. my first choreographic processes were the silent organization of our sustained work to restore, repurpose, conserve and find alternative uses for seemingly everything.

my practices bring together fellow makers to interweave palpable media (e.g., activating skin, clothing, built environments, performance landscapes, atmospheric elements, artifacts, quotidian objects) and immaterial objects (e.g., vocalizations, uttered texts, stories, rituals, light, concepts, prayers). Whether work is presented as a spontaneous or more consistently repeatable composition, it becomes through a sensitivity to visceral responses (including those of collaborators) to ______________ (fill in the blank).

A devotion to performance as a means to nurture socio-cultural transformation, led me to conceive and launch Thought Loom (2009-2017), an artist-run company dedicated to giving traction to performance ideas. Thought Loom co-founding collaborators included Betsy Mullins, Ilana Reynolds, and Lydia Bittner-Baird. Thought Loom teamed up with visionary Miami-based organizations like Miami Light Project, New World Symphony, O, Miami Poetry Festival, and Bas Fisher International to support provocative makers (including cherished colleagues, sha Harrell and Octavio Campos) in enacting projects for concert halls, gallery spaces, historic street corners and buses.

Love has fueled my 30 + year teaching practice that spans studio, professional, community, public school, national conference (highlights include those held at Butler University and the University of the Arts), and university (highlights include New World School of the Arts, Smith College, UCLA) settings.

Areas of focus include choreography, improvisation (as generative process and as performance practice), multi-platform-experimental performance, directing and devising, constructive feedback processes, arts-integration practices, artist professional development, organizational collaborations and partnerships, organizational visioning and strategic planning, critical dance studies (delving into and fervently revising epistemologies), as well a number of “technical” movement practices ranging from ballet to post-post-modern forms, sometimes referred to as “contemporary”).

my pedagogies foreground personhood and multi-dimensionality. When in the role of “teacher,” i prioritize CARE, trauma-informed principles, depolarization, belonging, participation, agency, and non-othering, including anti-racist/anti-ableist/anti-ISM praxis. In the classroom/studio i emphasize undoing erasure/s. i seek to nurture spaces that support active questioning as a means to consciously acknowledge the knowings of each body in the room. among many things, i propose an ecosystems approach to course design that formally invites and acknowledges co-authorship, and ongoing feedback loops. A design that celebrates temporary community that forms during each deliberate gathering, known as a ‘workshop, class or course'.’

Since 2020, i have been lucky to connect with a number of learning communities, including dance majors at the University of Florida, art students at Florida International University’s Urban Studios, and National YoungArts Foundation awardees.

i am currently resident Teaching Artist for Arts for Learning Miami’s South Florida Wolf Trap initiatives (This work, with very young people and their awe-inspiring teachers, has indelibly altered my lived experience of the word “energy”), and Lecturer in Improvisation, advanced contemporary modern technique, and Orientation to Dance studies for the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music dance program. i also teach Humanities and dance courses at Miami-Dade College.

Leadership

My trust in the capacity of visual, literary, and performing arts methods to serve as a pathway to creating conditions that are equitable, diverse, inclusive, plentiful, individualized so as to honor full personhood prompts me to participate in the efforts of organizations whose work i admire, including Arts for Learning, the Miami Affiliate of Young Audiences (current role: Teaching Artist; selected past roles: Director of Programs & Operations, Director of Artist Services, Facilitator/Curriculum framework co-developer (2004-2011, consultant); the National YoungArts Foundation (past roles: Guest Artist, interdisciplinary, National Reviewer, dance, Alumni micro-grant panelist, multi-disciplinary, Director of Artistic Programming, 2012-2016); FUNDArte (past role: Out in the Tropics moderator); Pioneer Winter Collective (past role: Queer Motherwork panelist, moderated by Niurca Marquez); the MAP Fund (past role: reviewer); Petagay Letren’s Harambee and Exposure (current role: thought partner various projects; board member), CreARTE grants (past role: advisor) and UCLA’s Disability Ecology and Performance Exchange, initiated by choreographer/field shaper, Victoria Marks, and brought into being by a wowing community of artists and scholars (current role: action partner).

Performance

In my early career (~1991-2004), i worked as a collaborative dance artist with several independent, dance theater projects, performing frequently throughout South Florida and abroad.

For 15 years, i stepped away from performance to focus on ensemble performance making/choreographic roles.

In 2019, i returned to performance, primarily enacting long-form/experimental improvisational dance theater works.

Support

Learning

i am endlessly thankful for every collaborator who has leapt into the darkness with me. Their trust and investment is an immeasurable gift. i cannot overstate my gratitude to each of them. Special thanks to Daniel Bernard Roumain, Gema Corredera, and Ilana Reynolds, who offered their artistry to several early projects. And to sha Harrell and Lydia Bittner Baird, with whom i had the chance collaborate with in a number of capacities.

A prioritization of caregiving for family and community led me to develop work in Miami, where as cultural prodcuer, Beth Boone, recently noted, international IS local. Throughout my time in Miami, i have been blessed to share energy/space with DISRUPTERS, DREAMERS, RISK TAKERS and MAKERS. Some of these creatives refer to Miami as ‘home,’ some come through Miami briefly, and still others come to the city under-the-radar. i am struck by the way these artists generously share their practices in Miami’s politically complex, and geographically porous terrain.

While fluidly referring to myself as ‘Miami-based,” i had the chance to consider practices of performance at many elsewhere-s (including Hong Kong, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Spain, France, the UK, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and throughout the U.S.).

Awards

my efforts have received formal acknowledgement through four consecutive Miami-Dade independent Choreographer Fellowships (the maximum allowable); as well as a National Endowment for the Arts dance writing fellowship to attend its Institute for Dance Criticism at the American Dance Festival, and Knight Arts Challenge Award.

my work as a maker has been consistently, and generously supported through grants, commissions, and residency opportunities, including being selected as an inaugural artist for Tigertail Production’s exchange with Movement Research (2006).

Research and Training

After 30+ years participating in the field, i came into arts practice-in-academia for the first time. my graduate research came into being via a Smith College Teaching Fellowship (fall 2016), UCLA Graduate Opportunity Fellowship (2017-2018), UCLA Merle and Gerald Measer Scholarship (2018-2019), and with help and expertise from friends, colleagues, teachers and mentors with whom i had the privilege of sharing time and space from 2016-2020.

i hold an MFA from UCLA/World Arts and Cultures/Dance (2020), a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing from Barry University (1995) and am a graduate of New World School of the Arts’ High School Dance Division (1992).

It was a pleasure to join colleagues, Jackie Davis, Ali Kheradyar, and Miya Shaffer at the American Studies Association in November of 2024 in Baltimore, Maryland to consider research around “queerness” and the notion of “Unsolid Ground.”

Current project synopses; CV; work samples, as well as artist, teaching, and research statements

available upon request

contact: lettybassart (at) gmail (dot) com

happy to connect by email

pronouns (they, she, ell@/preferred: letty)

@lbassart