Dancers perform in “A Snowy Soiree” on Saturday afternoon at the Wheeler Opera House. The DanceAspen production featured entertainers in vibrant, festive costumes.

Dancers perform in “A Snowy Soiree” on Saturday afternoon at the Wheeler Opera House. The DanceAspen production featured entertainers in vibrant, festive costumes.

DanceAspen, a nonprofit contemporary dance company, will premiere its first summer showcase at the Wheeler Opera House on Aug. 25 and 26. This performance, titled “Solstice,” will feature work from world-renowned and award-winning choreographers Matthew Neenan of Philadelphia Ballet and Cayetano Soto of Barcelona, Spain. Audiences can also expect to see an all-time favorite piece by Australian ballet dancer Danielle Rowe.

When DanceAspen first reached out to Christel Stiver, wine director at the Hotel Jerome, about pairing wine with dance, she wasn’t sure what to think.

“I raised my eyebrows at first”, said Stiver. “It’s a unique and first-time experience for me, but I was very excited to have the chance to get creative.”

DanceAspen Founder Laurel Jenny Winton was 25 years old when she took an opportunity that would completely transform her life and career track.

An image from Tuesday night’s “Three Dance Episodes,” a collaboration between Dance Aspen and the Aspen Music Festival and School, at the Benedict Music Tent on the Aspen Meadows campus.

Last summer, DanceAspen’s inaugural gala sold out, and this year’s tickets are going fast. Touted as the “party of the year,” Executive Director Laurel Winton expects it to once again sell out soon.

DanceAspen’s much-anticipated winter program has finally arrived.

Premiering Friday and Saturday at The Wheeler Opera House, its program will include the debut of contemporary dance performances by three notable choreographers: Penny Saunders, Yin Yue, and Sebastian Kloborg.

DanceAspen’s winter program will present works by some of its own dancers alongside those of established choreographers like Penny Saunders, Yin Yue and Sebastian Kloborg at the Wheeler Opera House this Friday and Saturday.

DanceAspen will premiere its new winter program at the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen on March 17 and 18 at 7:30pm. This production will feature three original creations from world-renowned choreographers Penny Saunders, Yin Yue and Sebastian Kloborg. The performance will also feature works from local in-house dancers Matthew Gilmore, Madeline Scott and Blake Krapels.

This week's guest blog comes from DanceAspen, an organization with a strong vision for the city of Aspen and the greater Roaring Fork Community to have a thriving resident dance company that cultivates relationships among local artists and other arts organizations through the dedication and collaboration of high caliber performing arts.

It’s rare for a company dancer to present their own choreography alongside outsourced choreographers in a single showcase or program.

But DanceAspen is a rare breed. And the young company of six dancers continues to push past industry barriers and explore possibilities.

DanceAspen is presenting a winter pop-up series for the first time.

The shuttering of Aspen Santa Fe Ballet during the pandemic left Laurel Jenny Winton and fellow dancers Kaya Wolsey, Anthony Tiedeman, Matthew Gilmore, and Katherine Bolanos (now retired) out of work and with a serious dilemma: Do they leave a community they love and had built their lives around, or leave their dance careers behind?

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.

DanceAspen celebrates its one-year anniversary with a selection of three performances, collectively named “New Horizons.”

“I called this ‘New Horizons’ because we’re really looking forward,” said DanceAspen executive director Laurel Winton. “It’s an articulation of the development of this organization as a whole. We’ve only been around for a year, but it’s been like speed development. We’ve gotten quite far, and we keep looking ahead.”

If you had told Laurel Jenny Winton a year ago that DanceAspen would sell out its inaugural show, perform at the international Vail Dance Festival, put on its first fundraising gala and create multiple premiere works, the dance company’s founder said she would’ve never believed it.

The press release came to my inbox with the headline: “Two ski town rivals come together through dance,” which nailed the truth of the Vail Dance Festival: It’s all about collaboration. Any “rivalry” between the two towns is completely set aside as dancers create together, learn and inspire each other to take dance to its highest level.

In just one short year, DanceAspen has succeeded in creating a full-time, local dance company in Aspen, thanks to the vision and determination of its founder and executive director Laurel Winton and the entire team of dedicated and talented performers.

Nascent powerhouse DanceAspen is set for multiple performances at the world-renowned Vail Dance Festival this summer.