Front Page News-DanceAspen’s ‘re:imagine’ brings in American choreographers

News | Feb 4, 2026, Jennika Ingram, jingram@aspentimes.com

Young American choreographers whose trajectories have taken them to Europe and home again will be featured in DanceAspen’s world premiere “re:imagine,” on stage at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 21 and 3 p.m. Feb. 22 at the Wheeler Opera House.

Each dance will be paired with a short film to provide context and illustrate the creative process. The program includes new works by leading choreographers Houston Thomas, Shane Urton, Emilie Leriche, and DanceAspen’s own artist and choreographer Jonah Delgado. 

“I think the reality is that we are all, always in motion,” guest choreographer Leriche said.

Chicago-native Thomas, a 2025 Princess Grace Award winner, will share a new duet called “The Mating Dance.” It’s a modern, intense take on the classic Swan Lake, fusing the classic music of Tchaikovsky with fresh, contemporary movement. Thomas was formerly a soloist with the Dresden Semperoper Ballet in Germany. 

Los Angeles-native Urton, recently of Belgium’s Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, will debut a new piece called “Overtime.” The dance creation is set to an original score by Camiel Jansen, commissioned by DanceAspen. The work turns the corporate life into a surprisingly lyrical movement.

Aspen-based Delgado created “Arbitrary Relevance,” a stylish piece about reinvention, reflecting his contemporary edge.

Leriche’s “Of Field” draws on Mark Strand’s poem “Keeping Things Whole.” A Hubbard Street Dance Chicago alum, she turns poetic language into ensemble motion to create an immersive work.

“As a performer, certainly as a freelancer, his words have always carried a deep resonance. We tend to live these extremely restless, constantly in-motion lives, every few years picking everything up and changing environments, communities, countries even. Over the years, his words have given me a means to understand myself better,” Leriche told The Aspen Times.

Strand’s poem is centered upon a solo person moving to keep things whole, while Leriche’s work shifts to that of an ensemble, in which images and bodies depart as soon as they arrive, blurring the lines of coming and going. 

It caused Leriche to reflect, “If we’re all ‘moving to keep things whole,’ is there even a whole to begin with?” 

Leriche’s process began by creating a physical alphabet from existing texts. Then she mixed, abstracted, and recombined them, thereby “translating words into movement,” she said.

“I generate a lot of my physical systems by pulling from texts that I write prior to entering the studio or (as in this case) from an existing piece of writing,” Leriche said. “In some ways, I create a correlating physical ‘alphabet’ from these texts, and then play with abstracting them, throwing them together, sewing them together in different patterns, references. Something like — translating, speaking, re-writing those words in a different, physical language,” she said.

Ultimately, she considered “Of Field” to be a counterargument to Strand’s words.

“For me, the work seems to ask back ‘If we are all always in motion, how then do we find the whole in the first place?’ Something quite touching for me in the work is that it demands the whole-ness of the group. If Strand’s poem is written from the perspective of the constantly in-motion self, ‘Of Field’ is told from the perspective of the metaphorical ‘whole,'” Parisian-based Leriche said of her ensemble. “Asking us, perhaps, not to stay but to move with.”

All of the choreographers in the upcoming performance have developed new dances to elicit audiences’ unexpected thoughts, emotions, and experiences, according to Managing Director Allison Walsh.

Performing dancers include: Nicole Bui, Delgado, Matthew Gilmore, Meredith Harrill, Tyler Kerbel, Jane Mumford, and Myles Tracy.

“‘Re:imagine’ is a vibrant testament to the evolution of our craft, bringing internationally forged perspectives back to our local stage to create something entirely unique for the Aspen Community,” Executive Director of DanceAspen Laurel Winton said in a press release. 

A special Student Matinee “Behind the Curtain” will also run at 10 a.m. Feb. 20 at the Wheeler Opera House. This is an opportunity for students to peek behind-the-scenes at the dancers, costume, sound, and stage elements.

For more information and tickets, visit wheeleroperahouse.com/event/danceaspen-reimagine-2/ and dance-aspen.org/. For student education outreach, use promo code: WOHEDU2526 and sign-up.