2022 Shula Strassfeld Memorial Scholarship: Louise Heit
As we reflect on the 2022 Organizing with Artists for Change Winter Institute, we want to introduce you to one participant, Louise Heit, a teaching artist, choreographer, and performer, who was this year’s recipient of the Shula Strassfeld Memorial Scholarship.
Louise has spent over 25 years teaching creative dance and leading professional development and family workshops in NYC public and private schools. She has worked for Lincoln Center Education, 92Y Outreach, Dance Education Laboratory, Ballet Hispanico, DanceWave and the NYC Department of Education, among others. Since 2007, she has been a teaching artist with Together-In-Dance. She has received two SuCasa grants (’20 & ’21) from the Brooklyn Arts Council to led creative aging dance workshops.
As a choreographer and performer, she strives to find our humanity and illuminate our interconnectedness. Her choreography has been seen throughout NYC at the Center for Performance Research, Union Street Studio, Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, 92Y/Fridays at Noon, and at the Laban Centre in London. Louise has performed in dance/theater/puppetry and toured with Bessie Award-winning Adaptors Movement Theater, Pink Inc., and internationally with Marquis Studios.
Louise holds a MA from Trinity Laban Conservatorie of Movement and Dance in London, where she received a Bonnie Bird Memorial Scholarship, CMA (Certified Movement Analysis) from the Laban/Bartenieff Institute in NYC and BFA from New York University Experimental Theater Wing/Tisch Dance. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.
To support her participation in the 2022 Winter Institute, Louise received Dance Exchange’s annual scholarship celebrating Shula Strassfeld, a longtime company member, a loving mother, a devoted friend, and always an advocate that everyone dance as much as possible. The Shula Strassfeld Memorial Scholarship is a full-tuition scholarship awarded each year to a Winter Institute participant whose work and interests mirror Shula's dedication to creative aging and intergenerational exchange. You can make a donation to support the Shula Strassfeld Memorial Scholarship fund here.
Read below for a conversation between Louise and Dance Exchange Director of Communications Amanda Newman.
Amanda: Congratulations on receiving the Shula Scholarship, Louise. It’s an honor to award it each year, especially to someone doing work so connected to Shula’s interests and legacy. Tell us a bit about your work with older adults. What questions or ideas from your work were you bringing into the Institute?
Louise: I began working with older adults in 2019, when I volunteered to lead creative movement workshops at the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House in Manhattan. I was working with five older women to create a prelude to a dance that I was already choreographing at the time. The dance, “return”, explored how repetitive movement tasks can become rituals or mediations on our daily lives. The prelude, which was performed by the five older women alongside four mixed-aged professional dancers, framed the main body of the dance and added a layer of depth to the original work. This sparked my interest in continuing to work with older adults.
In 2020, I received a SuCasa grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council to offer creative dance workshops for older adults. Unfortunately, the program ended because of the pandemic. In 2021, I received another SuCasa grant to teach exclusively online. At this point, I was studying with Dance Exchange and was able to directly apply what I was learning at DX to my program. We played with some of DX exercises and created two dances: The Dessert Dance and When I Was Young I … and When I Was Older I …. We became a mini community and the participants, who had never met before, got to know each other through their dancing.
I also improvise weekly with a group of older professional dancers (57-80 years old). It is inspiring to be a part of this group of folks who continually feel the importance of dancing throughout their lives.
I am consistently amazed at the community of Dance Exchange. How it gathers movers of all ages and interests. I am also curious how DX uses dance to explore socio-political topics. I want to see and hear more stories from people of all ages, backgrounds, and passions and explore how to shape these experiences into dance works. When I am at a Dance Exchange workshop, I’m closely observing how the classes are structured, the tools and language that are used that support the participants to open their hearts and create meaningful movement that they share with others.
Amanda: What were some of the highlights of your Winter Institute experience?
Louise: I am always learning something new when I attend an Institute, a workshop, or a class. I have enjoyed getting to know the community and the people who are drawn to the mission of Dance Exchange. I re-connected with a colleague that I haven’t seen in 20 years! Most of all, it is a lot of fun to create and move together!
I was honored to be offered the Shula Strassfeld Memorial Scholarship, and though I was very disappointed when the Institute went remote, I know it was the right decision.
I really enjoyed Shawn Brush’s warm-up on the second day about using your senses to experience your space in a new way. I also enjoyed when Shawn was joined by Clarence Brooks in the following creative tools session. They were able to take their work on a large project, Of Equal Place: Isotopes in Motion and isolate the concept of personal “safety” and what that means to each of us. How pertinent a topic! We were led through a process to create our own movement phrase. And then as a group, we were tasked to create movements that were inspired by standard signage for safety precautions. That brought us back to the bigger picture of public safety. I thought it was a brilliant!
Amanda: It sounds like this Institute really built on your previous experiences with Dance Exchange. How long have you been to DX and what drew you to the organization initially?
Louise: I have known about Liz Lerman for many, many years. I have always been curious about her work with variable populations. Many years ago, I took several family workshops with my children and elderly father that were led by Dance Exchange at Jacob’s Pillow in Massachusetts.
In the middle of the pandemic, when I was about to start my second SuCasa residency, a director at the Brooklyn Arts Council reminded me of Liz Lerman’s work. So, I googled Liz Lerman and, even though she’s no longer with the organization, I discovered through my search that Dance Exchange was offering weekly remote classes and the Dance On Festival in May 2021!
Since attending the Dance On Festival, I have participated in several Thursday Dance On classes, Family MOVES, Co|Lab, and Dance Exchange’s Summer Institute and now the Winter Institute.
Amanda: What's next for you? What are you carrying forward from your Institute experience?
Louise: Truthfully the pandemic has been a struggle and a gift. It has side-lined some plans, but it has also allowed me to be a part of Dance Exchange. I am continuing to teach dance residencies with children and teachers in the NYC public schools. I am on the panel to judge this year’s Brooklyn Arts Council SuCasa grantees (grants to work in older adult centers), and I hope to receive another SuCasa grant myself. I am searching to find my next dance work.
This spring, I will be working with older adults at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah (CBST) one of the largest LGBT synagogues in the country through Together-In-Dance, an arts in education organization that I have worked with for over 10 years. I am looking forward to this new opportunity.