12 Minutes Max
We are delighted to announce our partnership with On the Boards on 12 Minutes Max! After 10 years of stewarding the program, we’re excited to collaborate with On the Boards to carry 12 Minutes Max forward—continuing to invigorate one of the country’s longest-running short-form performance showcases while creating enhanced opportunities for artists and audiences. 12 Minutes Max is still produced by Base, and all auditions and performance will happen at Base.
Audition for 12 Minutes Max: Edition One! This beloved short-form performance lab for new and experimental works was originated by On the Boards in 1979 and handed off to Base in 2017. Led by a different pair of community curators each round, 12 Minutes Max auditions are open to artists at all career stages working in dance, music, theater and more. For decades, 12 Minutes Max has been a launchpad for new artists and a testing ground for longer works—so much so that it’s inspired similar programs across North America, including Vancouver, B.C., Chicago and Houston. This edition will be curated by Skye Hughes and Rhea Keller.
12 Minutes Max is a low-tech showcase. Selected works can be up to 12 minutes long; each artist/group will receive a $200 fee. Check out our 12 Minutes Max Guidelines for details.
Support for the 2026-27 season of 12 Minutes Max at Base comes from our organizational partnership with On The Boards and generous individual donors to the Flourish Campaign.
Edition One Curators
Skye Hughes
Skye makes multidisciplinary, body-based performance. Her artistic practice is driven by the desire to investigate information war, identity politics, oppression, and the climate crisis — how these phenomena are inscribed upon the body, and how that inscription shapes our inner life and connection to each other.
Skye builds her work from the inside out, using body-based improvisation as a way of following sensation to imagination, inviting movement, vocalization, and language to emerge through the Action Theater method. She studied with Ruth Zaporah from 2012 to 2024 and now teaches Action Theater, practicing improvisation as a way to stay responsive and in relationship with the process of performance.
She studied dance at Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, earned a BFA in dance from the University of Colorado, and is an alum of the Headlong Performance Institute in Philadelphia.
Since arriving in Seattle in 2021, Skye has produced three evening length performances, infinitely wretched: why would we murder what we create? (2022), the body of pain in a post-antibiotic era (2024), and for posterity: proof of free will (2026), and was featured at 12 Minutes Max at Base Experimental Arts + Space (2023). She co-founded Studio Salon with fellow artist Kristen Yeung, a community for artists of all mediums to share reflection and feedback during the making of their work.
Rhea Keller
Rhea (she/they) is an independent dance artist based in Seattle, Washington. Her work utilizes patience, vigor, lilt and quirk to explore and validate identity, healing and connection.
In 2025, they were awarded the James Ray Residency and Touring Project by Seattle International Dance Festival where they presented their work reconciliation of a wanting body. Her choreography has been shown at BOOST Dance Festival, Newport Dance Festival, 12 Minutes Max, Fuselage Dance Film Festival and Choreography Project. She has also served as co-choreographer for Kyrin Grey’s evening length dance drama, The Infinite Loop.
Rhea has performed on stages across the United States, South Korea, and Morocco. Local to Seattle since 2021, they have worked with Alana Rogers, Kyrin Grey, Cameo Lethem, Beth Twigs, Bennyroyce Royon, Nicole Flores, Emily Schoen Branch, and Mary Sigward. Previously, she danced with Newport Contemporary Ballet, Central Illinois Ballet, and Rochester City Ballet.