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.

Performance Making/Process

Process

A striving toward radical humility fuels my production processes.

i am fascinated by the ways in which our perceptual organs compose, apprehend, and experience.

in the studio, i cleave, syncretize, and reckon.

An obsession with going deeper and further drives my work. i push speculative potentials. i embrace being critical AND complicit. i interrogate my ways of knowing. emphasize telling details. center unintended consequences. i question dance/performance values, and the field’s status quos. i engage in unwavering, embodied repurposing/s and emphatic re-imagining/s.

Work

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).

More on current projects coming soon.

Practice/s

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).

Samples

Though i adore film/pictures/digital media, i am wildly anxious about “performance documentation.” it is important to me to honor the privacy of every person that chooses to experience a performance presentation. as a quiet move toward resisting surveillance/evidence-based cultural norms, i have intentionally included very few work “samples” herein.

Community

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.

Teaching/Pedagogy

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 (through a master class on reaching into the body’s liquid knowing/s as a source of ongoing wisdoms), art students at Florida International University’s Urban Studios (via a talk on dance as visual art), and National YoungArts Foundation awardees (Interdisciplinary opening workshop National YoungArts Week).

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.

Strivings toward Service to the field

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 Ballet Español Rosita Segovia [Director, Rosita Segovia (Spain), classical and regional Spanish dance forms and dance for opera], Giovanni Luquini Dance Theater [Director, Giovanni Luquini (Brazil), co-led with Elizabeth Doud, and Jennylin Duany, devised radical dance theater works], Katherine Kramer Projects [Director, Katherine Kramer, employing improvisation as performance], Karen Peterson and Dancers [Director, Karen Peterson (engaging w representations of dancing bodies and disability aesthetics through stage work)] and as part of several independent, dance theater projects, performing frequently throughout South Florida and abroad.

For 15 years, i stepped away from performance to focus on ensemble composition/choreography/directing 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.).

i have also been lucky to share time with artists in formal learning environments [e.g., classes (including those curated for young people in NY, DC, and LA), courses, creative production residencies, workshops, intimate interviews/q & a’s] that have roused me deeply. Some of those artists include: 33 Fainting Spells, Jean Abreau, Chris Aiken, Makisig Akin, Debbie Allen, Dale Andre, Maya Angelou, Lucia Ataranha, Pedro Azorin, Marisol Blanco, Anne Bogart, Eric Booth, Clementine Bordeaux, Michelle Boule, Nuria Bowart, Arjani Brannum, Sarah Braunstein, Christine Brunel, Octavio Campos, Ann Carlson, Teo Castellanos, Jade Charon, Tanisha Cidel, Jess Curtis, Jackie Davis, Richard Danielpour, Jeffrey Deitch, Michelle Dorrance, Faye Driscoll, Gerard Ebitz, Doug Elkins, Michellle Ellsworth, Susan L. Foster, Dan Froot, Peter Gerber, Ghislain Gerrier, Renee Goldsberry, Levi Gonzalez, Triwi Harjito, Marueen Heffernan, Rosie Herrera, Gerri Houlihan, Marika Hughes, John Jasperse, Bill T. Jones, Daeun Jung, Miwon Kwon, Lisa Leone, Ralph Lemon, Daniel Lewis, Gary Lund, Vic Marks, Pearl Marrill, Susan Marshall, Jim Martin, Cristina Masdueno, Michael McElroy, Campbell McGrath, Ana Menendez, Rosa Mercedes, Brian Stokes Mitchell, David Molnar, Joan Morgan, Aamir Mufti, John Murillo, Jeremy Nelson, Jennifer Nugent, Tere O’Connor, Jay O’Shea, Eiko Otake, Sara Pearson, Wendy Perron, Daniel Pettrow, Sylvia Plachy, Victor Quijada, Lionel Popkion, Elizabeth Roe, Trecia Rolle, Paco Romero, David Rousseve, Salman Rushdie, Jay Scheib, Peter Sellars, Miya Shaffer, Alice Sheppard, Ros Shideler, Annika Simmons, Stephanie Skura, Shen-Wei, Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Augusto Soledade, Tula B. Strong, Estrellx Supernova, Nasha Thomas, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Lester Tome, Natasha Tsakos, Ros Warby, Ken Washington, Carrie Mae Weems, Patrik Widrig, Jared Williams, Wendy Woodson, Cheng-Chieh Yu, Andre Zachery, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar,… and so many more (heart swollen as i think of each interaction)

Awards

my dance-related 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 (initiated by Deborah Jowitt with continued leadership by Suzanne Carbonneau), 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 Education

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).

i am looking forward to joining 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

mostly social media-free, happy to connect by email or via linkedin

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