Community Spotlight: Pieter Performance Space
Our new blog segment, called “Community Spotlight”, is a way for us to connect our danceCREATE community to the broader arts community in Los Angeles, the US, and beyond. This month’s Community Spotlight features Pieter Performance Space, and is brought to you by our Business Operations and Program Development Manager Leah Zeiger.
As I began my dive into the Los Angeles dance scene, after spending 5 years in Chicago getting my Bachelors in Dance and starting my career as a choreographer, I was directed towards the Pieter Performance Space over and over again by the connections I was making. I visited the space in Lincoln Heights, met the Director Dorothy Dubrule, and started the process of joining their internship program. This all happened in February, and was quickly thwarted when the pandemic took hold in California just a few weeks later.
Nonetheless, I’ve kept up with Pieter’s online community, and have stayed connected to their programming. As can be seen on their website, “Pieter Performance Space is an open platform for the LA dance community to exchange resources and information with each other and the broader dance world”.
They pride themselves on being a “brave space for people of all kinds”, which struck me as a very similar priority to danceCREATE’s foundational mission to be a “safe space where art can occur for everyone”. Indeed, I’ve found that Pieter’s community values parallels our own, and have found a (virtual) home there as well.
Though Pieter has unfortunately been forced to join the likes of Movement Lifestyle, Edge Performing Arts, and others who have lost their physical studio space due to economic hardship resulting from the pandemic, they’ve been able to transition out of the physical realm while keeping their connection to their community strong. They host monthly Pieter Community Advisory Committee (PCAC) meetings - which are open to anyone - in order to stay transparent and community-driven in their efforts to continue their work.
They are offering an array of online classes and workshops, which can all be found here, and vary from Cunningham technique, ecstatic dance, Pilates, and more.
I highly recommend joining Pieter’s community of artists by signing up for their newsletter, dropping into an online class, or even joining the next PCAC meeting. They truly do embody their mission statement:
“Ideas are embodied, exchanged and transformed rather than owned. There is a belief in abundance and goodness. There is a belief that everyone has something to give. At Pieter, brave dancing bodies are at home.”