Photo by Roxana Barba. Installation by Carol Jazzar.

Art making

i am a

• performance maker (collaborator, contributor, director, improvisor, choreographer, dramaturge, performer),

• teacher (enthusiastic nourisher of cultural futures),

• researcher (avidly seeking, threading, uncovering, expanding, physically theorizing), 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 in 2003. Since then, i have been fortunate to partner with esteemed colleagues to generate more than thirty long and short form works.

Selected Recent projects

• Evidence of Things Unseen as part of Bits and Pieces curated by Victoria Mora at Miami Light Project

• Synchrony Project under the direction of Susie Green, featuring UM lap top ensemble, guest artist, Kyle Hutchins, and activations by UM dance artists

• Untitled, a response to Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman’s work at the Lowe Art Museum

• Here, Now, an improvisational duet with Daniel Bernard Roumain for Miami Light Project Here & Now

• a durational performance in response to Carol Jazzar’s Last Call, New Glory installation

Highlights:

• 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?, a 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

• several early collaborations with Berlin-based artist, Ilana Reynolds, e.g. Flower Chronicles, Requiem for a Mustard Seed, Good, God, Go, and 100

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. i was also a Spanish dance artist.

i stepped away from performing to focus on directing and choreographing ensemble works from the “outside.”

At 44, i returned to performance, primarily enacting long-form/experimental improvisational dance theater works. If a marathon covers an unfathomable distance (albeit a measured one), a long-form work sustains composition for an un-imaginable length of time (albeit clocked). When i perform now (at 50), i relish the sustained channeling of this format.

In April of 2026, I will be performing as part of Dale Andre’s National Water Dance Project composition in Miami.

Support

Colleagues

i am endlessly thankful for every collaborator who has leapt into the darkness with me. 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 many capacities.

A prioritization of caregiving for family and community led me to develop work in Miami. Cultural producer, Beth Boone, recently noted, in Miami, 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.

In November 2024, i had the pleasure of joining colleagues, Jackie Davis, Ali Kheradyar, and Miya Shaffer at the American Studies Association n Baltimore, Maryland to consider research around the notion of Unsolid Ground. Their texts are still ricocheting through me.

While producing as a Miami-based artist, i have been lucky to be with performance practice at many elsewhere-s, including Belgium, England, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Scotland, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, the Netherlands, Viet Nam, and throughout the U.S.

Awards

my efforts have received formal acknowledgement through four consecutive (the maximum allowable) Miami-Dade independent Choreographer Fellowships (award designated by a curated panel of national luminaries in the field); a 2025-2026 Choreographer Fellowship, as well as a National Endowment for the Arts dance writing fellowship, and a beloved Knight Arts Challenge Award.

my work as a maker has been generously supported through grants, commissions, and residency opportunities, including being selected as an inaugural artist for Tigertail Production’s exchange with Movement Research (2006). i am especially thankful to the Adrienne Arsht Center and Miami Light Project for its ongoing support.

Research and Training

After 30+ years participating in the field, i came into arts practice-in-academia. My academic work began with a Smith College Teaching Fellowship (fall 2016) and continued with a UCLA Graduate Opportunity Fellowship (2017-2018), as well as UCLA Merle and Gerald Measer Scholarship (2018-2019).

i hold an MFA from UCLA/World Arts and Cultures/Dance (2020), and a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing from Barry University (1995), attending on a full academic scholarship.

Other simultaneously lived lives

As a young artist, i eagerly sought to tangibly flex all sides of my brain. to make South Florida more elastic. i often did so through unusual approaches to working.

For example, while choreographing, touring and performing, i served as a hospice nurse (sometimes attending to a death and performing at the Opera house within the same evening). i also stepped into posts as program director at the Offices of Epidemiology and Disease Control (developing protocols and forging partnerships with some of the most incredible thinker-travelers i have ever met), and middle school integrated science teacher/ballet technique consultant (the stories here are many). i even accepted an invitation to teach high school chemistry and night school health courses.

Each of these journeys was remarkable. Each left an indelible mark on my artistic practices.

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

available upon request

contact: lettybassart (at) gmail (dot) com

On Instagram: @lbassart