Dance Aspen bringing top choreo to Vail Dance Festival

The company that was Aspen Santa Fe Ballet carried the mantle for contemporary Colorado dance for more than two decades, and carried it far, headquartering itself in its two namesake cities but touring across the country where its skilled troupe and innovative movement won wide acclaim.

The pandemic put an end to all that. The international shutdown of performing arts venues put pressure on the organization and its finances. ASFB, as it was known, decided to cease operations. The loss to Colorado culture was notable.

But, as we have all learned over the past two years, art is resilient, and so are the people who make it. Out of the ashes of ASFB now comes Dance Aspen, a new outfit founded and run by the dancers the old company left behind.

It’s a bold move. Getting any nonprofit off the ground in 2022 is daunting, and the up-and-down economy surely complicates things. But as Dance Aspen’s Laurel Winton frames the situation, it was a case of reinvention, relocation or retirement.

“There was really no other option for us living in Aspen” she said. “Our choices were either to leave the community to find another dance job or stop dancing and stay in the community.”

Thanks to support from local business and cultural institutions, Dance Aspen is quickly getting on its feet. The company has presented a few opening concerts and makes its big move Aug. 7 when it will be featured at the Vail Dance Festival.

Vail may be just down the road a bit, but it is a major forum. The fest is world-renowned for bringing together the best talent from dance capitals in the U.S. and Europe and mixing up their work like a DJ. At the Vail Dance Festival, ballet stars share the spotlight with ballroom, tap, hip hop dancers and more.  It’s the best of the best, one of those high-end operations that make Colorado culture unique in the summer.

Dance Aspen should fit right in. The troupe is professional and experienced, and currently with seven dancers, including six veterans from the previous company. They know each other and their corresponding strengths.

They are working with top choreographers. Already in the repertoire are pieces by Danielle Rowe, Ana Maria Lucaciu and Cali Quan. At Vail, the company will perform a new piece by Rowe and premiere a work being created now by Matthew Gilmore, which will feature a live violin performance by Mintze Wu.

That deep rep didn’t happen by accident.  When choreographers heard the company was gearing up, they offered to help. Rowe actually donated her efforts.

Also supportive were places like the Wheeler Opera House, the historic Aspen landmark where Dance Aspen debuted in the spring.

If you go

For info on Dance Aspen’s upcoming performances at the Vail Dance Festival, Lone Tree Arts Center and the Wheeler Opera House, go to danceaspen.org

“All communities are richer when they have resident artistic companies,” said Wheeler’s executive director Lisa Rigsby Peterson, explaining why the opera house did its part. “And we are so lucky to be witnessing the birth of an exceptional group of artists here.”

Rigsby Peterson gets at something important about the resurrected company. ASFB was crucial to the arts scene in the mountain region, where the fall, spring and winter can be as low in cultural offerings as it is in temperatures, particularly dance.

Dance Aspen isn’t just preserving employment for artists; it also has the potential to keep the region interesting year-round.

Winton understands that, too. As founder and executive director, she hopes the company grows back to a place where it can tour widely. But it is focusing its early efforts close to home.

“Touring is important just to get the brand out there in the world and to be relevant, not just in our community but nationally and internationally,” she said. “But Aspen and the valley is our hometown, and that is always going to be our main place.”

Aside from another scheduled performance on Sept. 23 at the Wheeler Opera House, which follows a Sept. 17 date at the Lone Tree Arts Center (where, not coincidentally, Rigsy Peterson was the former executive director), the company is still considering its options for how future seasons will shape up.

There will be other distinctions between the old ASFB and the new Dance Aspen. Santa Fe is out as a second home. That dual citizenship was heralded as a pioneering effort in the dance world, back in the day — a way of winning patronage from two bases, both known for housing deep-pocketed residents willing to support local art. As a strategy, it worked — until it didn’t.

But Winton is envisioning something more intimate with her company, much more rooted in partnerships with Aspen’s existing enterprises. And the new company is evolving its own unique model better-suited to the moment.

Like most contemporary dance companies, ASFB was a top-down organization with the artistic directors setting the agenda and the dancers stepping in line. Dance Aspen is more democratic, more artist-centered. “We discuss everything,” said Winton. “Since we are so small, it’s really a group effort.”

That’s a logical way to proceed for a company that pulled itself up from the ruin —  and not a small bit of trauma. “When the company folded, we were devastated. We didn’t know what to do,” Winton said.

But within a year, they were dancing together again, and trusting that their efforts — unfunded and unchartered at the moment — and their time in a new studio eventually would reap rewards.

“Eventually” came quick enough, and for that Winton credits Aspen itself.

“We are part of the community already,” she said. “We have friends here and they wanted us to stay.”

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