Introducing Basin Dance Collective
From Basin Arts Director, Clare Cook…
Times are changing! Clare Cook Dance Theater is taking a bow to make way for Basin Dance Collective!
In 2010, I began Clare Cook Dance Theater as a vehicle to create and produce original, collaborative dance theater productions in NYC. Through CCDT, I had the most fortunate and thrilling opportunities to present work at the New York Musical Theatre Festival, DanceNOW Festival at Joe’s Pub, NYU, Triskelion Arts, Spoke the Hub and so many other places with the most generous and talented dancers and collaborators. Many of these projects spanned the geographic boundaries of NYC and Louisiana with performances with the Acadiana Symphony Orchestra and the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette.
In 2016, I made the move back to my hometown of Lafayette, after a decade of working in NYC. Since that moment, I have been totally inspired by Acadiana’s burgeoning arts community and have spent most of my waking hours working on as many projects and initiatives as humanly possible to foster the growth of our creative class. Basin Arts opened in August 2016 as an extension of my deep-rooted passion for artistic collaboration and my desire to support the development of professional artists in a hands-on, approachable environment.
The Basin Arts community has grown immensely with dance and visual arts programming taking the lead. And, now it’s time for professional dance in Acadiana to take a step forward as well. I’m very, very excited to announce the launch of Basin Dance Collective, as the resident contemporary dance company at Basin Arts.
The mission of Basin Dance Collective is to create and perform engaging work, which fosters an appreciation of dance as a vital art form. Basin Dance Collective provides a physically and intellectually rigorous outlet for high-caliber dancers, choreographers, and collaborators of all artistic disciplines to incubate and develop original work reflective of the vibrancy and diversity of South Louisiana while also satisfying the professional standards of the greater dance industry. In addition, Basin Dance Collective will work to share the life-giving power of movement and dance to people of all ages, abilities and interests through workshops and outreach classes.
I will serve as Artistic Director for Basin Dance Collective alongside my work as the Executive Director of Basin Arts and I look forward to developing much new choreography in collaboration with a dynamic ensemble of dancers: Paige Barnett, Sydni Bourg, Nicole Curtis, Rachel Geiger and Whitney Hebert.
This is most definitely the beginning of another exciting chapter in this life of dance and one that is larger than any one person. Basin Dance Collective is ready to leap into the Acadiana community and we are eager to share what we’ve been up to over the last few months of development. The work continues…!
