Dance Aspen looks toward 'New Horizons'

When the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet dissolved its local performance company in March, the prospects for contemporary ballet dancers in Aspen didn’t look great.

They could leave town and try to pursue dance somewhere else, or they could retire from dancing and stay here.

Neither option seemed very appealing.

So, they came up with their own solution, founding a new nonprofit called Dance Aspen in the middle of a pandemic that had cast a dark cloud over the world of performing arts.

Kaya Wolsey, one of the founding artists in Dance Aspen, said she sees a story of resilience in the artists’ desire to do what many thought couldn’t be done.