Please join us Saturday, March 21, at 4 PM for NYC-based Choreographer Juliana F. May’s Movement Workshop!

You can learn more about Juliana here.
RSVP here.

Juliana F. May Movement Workshop:
March 26 at 10 AM - 12 PM
Space is available at 9:30 AM for warm-up.

Join NY choreographer for her movement class, Choreographic Idiom. Developed over the past 10 years, this improvisation-based class where you can work on dancing, performing, and choreographic process all within the same framework. In class, we upend typical structural strongholds by moving away from a mode of doing and a mode of processing. Can we do an improvisation or a series of exercises that are not about development or the "culminating idea"? Exercises, dancing/performing, and conversation are permitted to co-exist without having to constantly make sense of each other. Can this shift away from the notion of "culminating ideas" lead us deeper into radicalizing our choreographic and performative habits? This is an opportunity to come work on your work in a supportive and experimental setting. This is essentially an open score improvisation class.

About the Base Residency:
The Base Residency is a unique, artist-curated program offering unrestricted space, the opportunity to publicly share work, technical, marketing, and administrative support, travel and lodging for out-of-town artists, and a fee of $1,000 per residency week. The ‘25-’26 Residency Season was curated by Parisa Ghaderi, Joseph Hernandez, and Keyes Wiley. This year, the Base Residency offers six artists—three from the Seattle area and three from beyond—two weeks of immersive creative time at Base between January and July 2026. Since 2016, more than 30 artists have completed Base Residencies as the program continues to evolve and grow within a national context. Meet Base Residency Alumni here.

Accessibility + Directions
Base is an ADA-compliant, accessible space on the ground floor, with all-gender and wheelchair-accessible restrooms. More on accessibility at Base here. Have any questions? Email aaron@thisisbase.org.

Flourish:
In 2024, Base launched Flourish—a three-year fundraising effort to support residencies, organizational capacity, and new community-facing programs. Now, as Base celebrates its 10th anniversary, we’re entering Year Two of Flourish—building on momentum as we acknowledge the realities artists face today. If you’re unable to attend this event, but would like to support Base, please consider donating to our campaign.

Please join us Saturday, March 21, at 4 PM for NYC-based Choreographer Juliana F. May’s Entry Point!

Facilitated by Dayna Hanson, join Choreographer Juliana F. May and dramaturg Hilary Clark for a conversation about their working relationship over the last ten years as they reflect on their last piece, Optimistic Voices, and begin to think and envision May's next work, "Dreams part III”.

Juliana F. May Entry Point:
March 21 at 4 PM
You can learn more about Juliana here.
RSVP to her Entry Point here.

About Entry Points:
Entry Points are opportunities for our Resident artists to share their process. They may take the form of a showing, a conversation, or another expression of the artist's imagination. It’s an opportunity for the community to engage with the deep dives the artists undertook during their Residency and, possibly, discover a new artist or deepen their connection to an artist they support.

About the Base Residency:
The Base Residency is a unique, artist-curated program offering unrestricted space, the opportunity to publicly share work, technical, marketing, and administrative support, travel and lodging for out-of-town artists, and a fee of $1,000 per residency week. The ‘25-’26 Residency Season was curated by Parisa Ghaderi, Joseph Hernandez, and Keyes Wiley. This year, the Base Residency offers six artists—three from the Seattle area and three from beyond—two weeks of immersive creative time at Base between January and July 2026. Since 2016, more than 30 artists have completed Base Residencies as the program continues to evolve and grow within a national context. Meet Base Residency Alumni here.

“The Base Artist Residency was crucial to the development of RoCoCoCoCo and indeed, my continued evolution as a creative artist. Having time and space to live in the questions of my work, to listen to my body, and to be in conversation with my dancing collaborators teaches me. Base offered me enough time to let the ideas establish themselves. This generosity feels like trust - like the institution/Base trusts the artists, and this allows the artists to trust the art/themselves.”

Heather Kravas (WA)
2024-2025 Base Resident Artist

Flourish:
In 2024, Base launched Flourish—a three-year fundraising effort to support residencies, organizational capacity, and new community-facing programs. Now, as Base celebrates its 10th anniversary, we’re entering Year Two of Flourish—building on momentum as we acknowledge the realities artists face today. If you’re unable to attend this event, but would like to support Base, please consider donating to our campaign.

Accessibility + Directions
Base is an ADA-compliant, accessible space on the ground floor, with all-gender and wheelchair-accessible restrooms. More on accessibility at Base here. Have any questions? Email aaron@thisisbase.org.

Base is excited to introduce Pairings: Collaborations in Movement and Music, a new pilot program for our  2025–2026 season. This program brings together musicians and movement artists to explore the boundaries of form, range, experimentalism, and context.

Curated by Bebe Miller and Lori Goldston, Pairings offers a platform for cross-disciplinary collaboration and inquiry, supporting artists in incubating connections that are exploratory, present, and rigorous. These collaborations culminate in an informal showing at Base on Saturday, March 14, at 7 pm.

This edition will feature collaborations between
Nia Amina Minor x Nicolle Swims
Una Ludviksen x Kole Galbraith

Learn more about the program here and grab your tickets!

Please join us Saturday, February 28, at 4 PM for Nakisa Dehpanah’s Entry Point!

Learn more about Nakisa here, and get tickets here!

Nakisa’s Entry Point invites the public into the research phase of her upcoming project, Suspended Selves. Six suspended prototype structures will be installed with incomplete skins, emphasizing process rather than finished work.

Visitors are invited to create small fabric pieces using prompts and a range of materials focused on memory and presence, then attach them to the structures. Through this shared act, layered skins are built collectively. Participants are then guided to move slowly beneath and between the forms, eventually standing under one, experiencing the work through both making and embodied movement.

Nakisa Dehpanah Entry Point at Base:
February 28 at 4 PM

About Entry Points:
Entry Points are opportunities for our Resident artists to share their process. They may take the form of a showing, a conversation, or another expression of the artist's imagination. It’s an opportunity for the community to engage with the deep dives the artists undertook during their Residency and, possibly, discover a new artist or deepen their connection to an artist they support.

About the Base Residency:
The Base Residency is a unique, artist-curated program offering unrestricted space; the opportunity to publicly share work; technical, marketing, and administrative support; travel and lodging for out-of-town artists; and a fee of $1,000 per residency week. Since 2016, more than 30 artists have completed Base Residencies as the program continues to evolve and grow within a national context. Meet Base Residency Alumni here.

“The Base Artist Residency was crucial to the development of RoCoCoCoCo and indeed, my continued evolution as a creative artist. Having time and space to live in the questions of my work, to listen to my body, and to be in conversation with my dancing collaborators teaches me. Base offered me enough time to let the ideas establish themselves. This generosity feels like trust - like the institution/Base trusts the artists, and this allows the artists to trust the art/themselves.”

Heather Kravas (WA)
2024-2025 Base Resident Artist

Accessibility at Base: The Factory has a ramped entrance at the north end of the building (through the orange door); the southern entrance of the building is only accessible by stairs. The building has limited exterior lighting, making it difficult to navigate and locate when it's dark.

Once inside, Base is accessible by ramp through our front doors. Please note that Base is not a scent-free space. The Factory has two gender neutral multi-stall restrooms and two single stall restrooms that are wheelchair accessible.

Because we share a building with other studios, there is often industrial noise and heavy machinery in operation, such as forklifts.

Any additional accessibility needs/requests for the show? Reach out to aaron@thisisbase.org

The Bonnies (twin flames Kaitlin McCarthy and Jenny Peterson) have been making strange performance works together in Seattle, WA, since 2013. Gravitating to the grotesque/off-kilter/marvelous, their work rides the edges of humor and horror to find transformation and intimacy.

Entry Point | Movement Workshop
Accessible to people of all physicalities, this 2-hour process workshop alternates verbal and somatic space with imagination work, embodied meditations, partner exercises, and gently held risk taking in play and processing. Can we loosen our grip on reality long enough to let the body lead us into imagining new possibilities? The Bonnies will lead the group through practices used in the creation of their latest piece (I’m on Fire, You’re on Fire, We’re on Fire), exploring joy, fantasy, afterlife, and other possible selves in a container of agenda-free community research. Absolutely no dance/movement experience required, this is a space where you can show up as you are and respond to prompts through multiple mediums, including writing, drawing, movement, and speaking. Touch-free options will be provided for all exercises involving touch. Masks welcome. Please bring a notebook and pen and wear comfortable clothes.

This workshop is recommended for adults or mature teenagers.

RSVP Here — Walk-up tickets for class available when arriving at Base!

WINTER MINGLE: BASE 10TH ANNIVERSARY SEASON
An evening of warmth, art, and community

As the days grow shorter and the air turns crisp, we invite you to gather with us for Winter Mingle—an evening to connect, celebrate, and toast to our 10th anniversary season.

Date: Wednesday, December 10
Time: 5:30–8:30 PM (Performances around 7 PM)
Location: Base
Admission: Free / RSVP encouraged

You can expect…

• Live performance by Base co-founder Peggy Piacenza and Aaron Butler + film screening from Film pilot program curator Jay Kuehner

• Seasonal drinks + Pizza from Cornelly

• A toast to ten years of creativity

• A chance to connect with friends, artists, and Base community

Let’s warm the winter evening together and kick off a new decade of imagination!

A Body (Un)Becoming is a dance duet that explores the tension between decay and transformation—where the body meets disintegrating materials through acts of touch, labor, and experimentation. Working with discarded substances such as eggshells, the piece investigates what new forms can emerge through pressure, heat, and attention. By animating overlooked materials, including an aging female-identified human body, the work challenges fixed ideas of being and utility, proposing humanness as a permeable state—fragile, reforming, and ongoing.

Directed by Beth Graczyk
Performed by Leah Wilks & Beth Graczyk
Music by Aaron Gabriel, cello recording Laura Sewell
Lighting Design & Technical Director ILVS STRAUSS
Costumes by Asa Thornton
Rehearsal Assistant Neva Guido
Biomaterial Sculptures by Beth Graczyk

*Note: Performance contains partial nudity (bare-chests) 
Show runs ~ 45 minutes

Get tickets here!

Beth Graczyk (sher/her), a native of the Northwest (Arlington shout-out!), is a choreographer, director, performer, and educator who has been based in Brooklyn/Lenapehoking for the past 11 years. Her formative years as an emerging artist were in Seattle, and her pre-formative years in Arlington, where she first learned to dance from her momma. She remains deeply connected to the Northwest through ongoing artistic dialogue. With a 22-year career as both an artist and scientist, Graczyk builds interdisciplinary bridges across fields. She is the Artistic Director of Beth Graczyk Productions, Inc. (BGP, founded 2020), a nonprofit that merges art and science while centering queer and neurodivergent perspectives. Since 2006, she has choreographed and presented work across the US and internationally (Japan, China, India), with presentations by Velocity Dance Center, Gibney, On the Boards, ODC, La MaMa, JACK, CPR, Movement Research amongst others. She is on faculty for the Peridance Certificate Program in NYC, and adjunct faculty at Montclair University. Her recent dance documentary Waiting for the Bus (2024–25) explores autism, self-expression, and identity, and has been selected for NY Global Lift-Off, Sans Souci, and the Winter Film Festival. In parallel, she is a biochemist & co-author of 11 science publications and currently conducts sensory research in the Ruta Lab at The Rockefeller University.

Leah Wilks (she/they) is a dancer, teacher, and choreographer currently based out of Brooklyn, NY, originally hailing from central NC. At times she is also a gardener, musician, and elder-care/end-of-life companion. Leah has taught and shared her work in a variety of locations including the American Dance Festival, Elon University, University of Michigan, Ponderosa Tanzland festival, Gibney Dance, and Theater for the New City. She holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and is currently an adjunct faculty member at Montclair State University. Leah has been an Artist in Residence at MOtiVE Brooklyn, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and MacDowell. She has collaborated with a variety of dance and interdisciplinary artists including Okwui Okpokwasili, Alexis Blake, Kendra Portier, Tatyana Tenenbaum, Anna Barker/Real.Live.People, and Tommy DeFrantz/SLIPPAGE. This is her first project with BGP and she is thrilled to be joining Beth on this creative dive.

Aaron Gabriel (they/them) is a Twin-Cities based generative theater artist and composer whose works centers marginalized artists who identify as genderqueer and/or neurodiverse. Gabriel’s unique approach to participant-based music creation music and lyric writing has allowed them to produce over 40 original works with under-represented artists both internationally in Algeria, Congo, India, Morocco, Thailand, France and England and nationally in the Twin Cities, New York and New Orleans. Gabriel has been published in Movement Research and National Composers Forum. www.aarongabrielmusic.com

Cellist Laura Sewell (sher/her) has an active and varied musical career and has distinguished herself as a highly respected chamber musician. She was the founding cellist of the award-winning Lark Quartet which, during her tenure, won the Bronze Medal at the Banff International String Quartet Competition and served as the Juilliard String Quartet’s teaching assistants at the Juilliard School. Two decades later, she was the cellist of the acclaimed Artaria String Quartet from 2007-2016. She plays as a substitute cellist with the Minnesota Orchestra and performs with the Twin Cities-based Isles Ensemble. Ms. Sewell received her Bachelor’s Degree from the Juilliard School where she was a student of Leonard Rose, and her Master’s Degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music where she studied with Alan Harris. At the age of seventeen, Laura had the unique opportunity to study with legendary cellist, Jacqueline du Pré.

*Note: Performance contains partial nudity (bare-chests) 
Show runs ~ 45 minutes
Beth Graczyk Productions
Beth Graczyk

This event is through the Base Independent Rental Program. 

Please join us at Base on Tuesday, August 19 for a work-in-progress showing for Heather Kravas.

For her Base Residency, Heather Kravas is researching RoCoCoCoCo, a situation for dancing envisioned as a DIY folk dance that turns into a snowflake, fractals into a vortex, veers into a grocery list, emanates like an aura, aligns like a pinball machine and collaborates like an ant colony. Created for performers Allie Hankins, Amanda Morgan, Symone Sanz, Sylvia Schatz-Allison and Julia Sloane, RoCoCoCoCoexploits tension and so-called repetition to create a choreography full of vigor and syncopation. Supercharged, rhythmic, precise, euphoric and tender it proposes a different frame to hold the performers and audience in their complex states of expectation and desire.

Base Residency Entry Point: Heather Kravas
Tuesday, August 19 at 7:00 PM
Purchase Tickets Here

Space is limited– please reserve a ticket in advance. Masks are encouraged, but not required at Base.

Photo by Erin Johnson
[Sylvia Schatz-Allison in Échapée, from tropisms by H. Kravas]

Please join us at Base on Saturday, July 26 at 12:00 PM for a work-in-progress showing for Alyza DelPan-Monley’s Base Residency.

During this residency, Alyza invites us into their research with the concept of time: systemic measurement, cultural significance, permanence, a lifetime, watches, rhythms and more. What will we discover? Only time will tell... 

Base Residency Entry Point: Alyza DelPan-Monley
Saturday, July 26 at 12:00PM
Purchase tickets here

Space is limited– please reserve a ticket in advance. Masks are encouraged, but not required at Base.

Photo by The Artist
[Alyza looks to the edge of the frame scribbled over by text, doodles and hatchmarks.]

Please join us at Base on Saturday, July 19 for a work-in-progress showing for Constance Strickland.

During her Base Residency, Constance Strickland will build a physical score for A Study on the Weight of Blackness (Unveils) the Resilience of Being Black, a solo that merges years of movement memory/ research with vocal investigations rooted in her own poetry and text. 
Going through a series of seven movements, Strickland will trace and honor her maternal ancestral heritage, using voice as a vessel for remembrance and reconnection. She will also continue her exploration of sculptural creation using natural materials such as earth, wood, and collected plants. These elements are not merely aesthetic—they are extensions of lineage and land, grounding the work in a tactile relationship to ancestry, ritual, and resilience.

Base Residency Entry Point: Constance Strickland
Saturday, July 19 at 4:00 PM
Purchase Tickets Here

Space is limited– please reserve a ticket in advance. Masks are encouraged, but not required at Base.

[Constance Strickland holding bricks in front of face. “Icanbearthisandworsetoo”. Photo by Francisco Montenegro]

Please join us at Base on Saturday, June 21 for a new work by Alia Swersky and Hannah Rice.

Base Residency Entry Point: Alia Swersky and Hannah Rice
Sunday, June 21 at 8:00 PM
Pre-show begins at 7:30 PM
Purchase tickets here

WHAT IS HOLY is a performance collage of shared histories, rooted in the evolving creative collaboration between Alia and Hannah. The piece weaves together material from past projects while unearthing the emergent question: What is holy?

Over the past several months, Alia and Hannah have worked with sound, choreography, video, and improvisation scores to explore their artistic connection—one defined by transition and transformation—beginning to end and a beginning again.

Their relationship began when Alia was Hannah's professor at Cornish College of the Arts. Over the past seven years, that connection has developed into a rich and sustained creative partnership. As Rice prepares to leave Washington for graduate school this summer, WHAT IS HOLY marks a meaningful threshold—both a closing and an opening. It is an opportunity to honor a collaboration that has deeply impacted them as both artists and individuals.

The work draws on their personal and professional relationship, their physical and emotional journeys, and the ongoing evolution of their shared practice. Alia's recent experience navigating breast cancer has left a powerful imprint on the process—altering how they move, listen, and create. It is a reminder of the urgency of presence, and the significance of making work in times of deep change.

Collaborators Wade Madsen, Greg Mares, Rachel LeBlanc, and Casey Adams have all contributed essential elements to the development of this performance.

Audiences are invited to gather on the solstice evening to witness and co-create a space brought to life by this collective of artists—through movement, sound, and shared experience.

[ Alia Swersky and Hannah Rice in primary colors sitting on chairs looking down. High heeled shoes in foreground].]

Please join us at Base on Saturday, May 31 for a work-in-progress showing for Joseph Tran.

Audiences are invited to witness a work-in-progress showing of GOOD ENOUGH—a solo performance by Joseph "MN Joe" Tran in collaboration with choreographer Rudi Goblen. Originally premiering as a dance film, GOOD ENOUGH was created during MN Joe's McKnight Artist Fellowship for Dancers in 2021. During his residency at Base, Joe will begin transposing this dance film into a live-performance for the first time. Following the showing, there will be a Q&A and viewing of the film

Base Residency Entry Point: Joseph Tran
Saturday, May 31 at 4:00 PM
Purchase Tickets Here

Space is limited– please reserve a ticket in advance. Masks are encouraged, but not required at Base.

Photo by Adam Adolphus
[Joe Tran in a Cypher with onlookers and judges around him.]

Please join us at Base on Saturday, April 12 at 4:00 PM for Allie Hankin’s Base Residency Entry Point.

Allie will be working on her solo By My Own Hand, Part 4: MELODY, which concerns itself with the embodiment and biomechanics of voice and the interconnectedness of vocalization and movement. Throughout the piece, five analog tape recorders with looping tapes of various durations make brief recordings that are played back and overlapped to create unexpected overtones, rhythmic patterns, textures, and an imperfect and wavering chorus of voices that reveal the aural spaces between harmonies and the surprising pleasure of dissonance. The recurring sounds get paired and then re-paired with dances, actions, and images, creating an ever-evolving soundtrack that layers and distorts the audience's associations and experience of time and memory.

Space is limited– please reserve a ticket in advance. Masks are encouraged, but not required at Base.

Base Residency Entry Point: Allie Hankins
Saturday, April 12 at 4:00 PM
Reserve tickets here

Photo by West Smith

Please join us at Base on Saturday, March 1 for an installation and work in progress showing by 2024-2025 Base Resident Artists Hannah Simmons + Alethea Alexander. This event offers audiences agency to tune in, change the channel and interact at their leisure. Rolling entry: please arrive any time between 4:00-5:00 PM.

During their residency, Hannah and Alethea will develop a methodology for Failure Lab: an exorcism of their "worst ideas." They will sift through their backlog of unmade performance works to see what "terrible" ideas have to offer them. Trash, incoherence, decay, and regurgitation will be expected and celebrated.

Base Residency Entry Point: Hannah Simmons and Alethea Alexander
Saturday March 1st
Rolling entry 4:00-5:00 PM
Purchase pay what you wish tickets here

Space is limited; please reserve a ticket in advance. Masks are encouraged, but not required at Base.

Photo by Allina Yang
[ Two bodies glow softly in low light: limbs are draped and tangled, askew, and gravity is inverted.]

Stop by Base from 6PM - 8PM to see short performances by Shayley Timm, Meredith Pellon, Samantha Fabrikant, Dahlia Levine, Nat Robine, Nolan Klock, Gia Falzone, and Maria Matienzo! You can view the program here.

See below for other community activities:

Saturday, December 14 at Equinox Studios

3:00-9:00PM - Open Studios, Food Trucks, Music, Fire
9:00pm till late - More Music! More Fire! Shenanigans!

6555 5th Ave S, Seattle, WA

Poster and social media designs by Josh Harriman

Performance and Artist Lunch with UJDC and Mouthwater Team

For the second day of Urban Jazz Dance Company’s participation in Mouthwater Festival, we offer our first artist social. There will be lunch, refreshments and a sign up sheet for an open stage session. Bring a finished drag, a work-in-progress, an idea in movement form, a new burlesque piece, your latest b-boy move. This is the Disabled dance show-and-tell of your dreams.

Purchase Sliding Scale Ticket here or the Mouthwater Performance Package here.

Mouthwater: Disabled Arts Festival

 All events will be ASL interpreted. All venues have step-free access to the bathrooms and performance spaces. There will be a variety of seating and ear plugs available in venue spaces. Please reach out to cripdancedoula@gmail.com

Crip Open Stage is produced by Mouthwater Festival in partnership with Base.