VT
For 13 years now, Loom Ensemble has been devising dancetheater for culture shift. We use our performances to open difficult conversations, and then facilitate community discussion to unpack the emotional vulnerability and cultural taboos of each show. Recent performances we’ve made speak directly to racism, patriarchy, rugged individualism, and the body-shame-industrial complex. In that shared space, the social value of art made from a place of deep integrity becomes clear: our actions matter, new ways of living are possible, together we can build a more loving world.
We devise “dance-theater” in the literal sense, using character, story, and dialog to ground abstract dance in emotional specificity; and using full-bodied contemporary choreography to deepen the resonance of narrative storytelling.
We take deep pleasure in leading Loom Ensemble’s physical training within the rehearsal process. We practice unwinding conventional gender roles and shame through the embodied practice of movement, voice, and partnering. We are working from the inside out, to unlearn the systems of oppression that live in our interpersonal relationships and within our individual bodies.
Our design aesthetic values found objects, recycled materials, and organic materials.
Over the last decade, Loom Ensemble has toured this approach to dance-theater around the world, with teaching and performance residencies from NYC blackboxes to stone monasteries in Italy, repurposed industrial warehouses in Dubai and back to the fields of Vermont.
In addition, Neva danced with Pilobolus and Raphael performed with Sandglass Theater.
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We are thrilled to have received the New Work New England grant from NEFA to support the creation and tour of our newest work "Tell Me How You Breathe." This piece will be on tour in VT, MA, and NY in July and August 2023.
This piece draws on themes from our 2021 touring piece, and uses the lungs as a central metaphor for interconnectedness. Air may be the last public commons. Yet the impact of airborne illness and pollutant particles is not evenly distributed. Who gets to breathe freely, fully, with ease, is a necessary question to be asking as our culture continues to be plagued by racism and colonial violence. Loom’s show is vulnerable, brave, and inviting.
We are also booking repertory pieces: Prime, Fading Brightness and What the Jellyfish Knows.
Additional Content:
Please visit our website for information about our shows, workshops, creative process, how to be involved and more!
Learn more about Loom!
Work Sample "Twenty Twenty / Twenty Twenty-One" Video
Video of our 2021 piece that toured public parks in Vermont.
Full length video from a performance at Oberlin College, OH, USA
Work Sample "Fading Brightness" Video
Video of a staged reading performed in NYC in June 2019
Work Sample "What the Jellyfish Knows" Audio sample
Audio sample from "What the Jellyfish Knows," created in 2017, toured USA and Dubai.
Institution/Business Type:
Performing Group
Legal Status:
Nonprofit - Embedded in cultural private organization
Parent Organization:
Art Monastery
Year Founded:
2009
Institution/Business Type:
Performing Group
Legal Status:
Nonprofit - Embedded in cultural private organization
Parent Organization:
Art Monastery
Year Founded:
2009
Primary Discipline:
Theater - Devised / Artist-LedAdditional Disciplines:
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Fee range:
$25 - $1,500Teaching Settings:
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Fee range:
$25 - $1,500NEST Eligible Artist
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Fee Range:
$300 - $10,000State of Residence:
VermontMinimum Number of Performers:
1Maximum Number of Performers:
7