Text by Katie Shapiro
Images by Sidney Sherman, James Stukenberg, and Wendy Wetmore
On a crisp fall morning at Dance Progressions—one of Aspen’s longest-running dance schools—Laurel Winton is alone in the studio finishing up a solo barre session. The rest of the place is dark and deserted, as Winton’s fellow artists are scattered around the country on a break between contracts with her nonprofit contemporary dance company, DanceAspen. In the meantime, the 34-year-old founder and executive director is preparing for her company’s return to the rehearsal space it leases for summer and winter and planning for its third year of performances in Aspen and around the state.
Winton has been immersed in the Aspen community since 2017, when she was offered a coveted spot as a guest artist in Aspen Santa Fe Ballet’s annual production of The Nutcracker. “As soon as I came out here, I thought, ‘This place is like The Chronicles of Narnia.’ It’s crazy how beautiful it is,” Winton says. “I also loved the people so much that I expressed my desire to stay here in Aspen, and Aspen Santa Fe Ballet hired me with a full-time artist contract the following spring.”
Cut to 2021 and the venerable dual-city company announced it was dissolving its residency and performing arm in Aspen—leaving its 11 Aspen artists without a stage. (ASFB still operates a school and a Fund for Innovation in Dance, along with presenting select performances in both Colorado and New Mexico.) “It was during one of the last ebbs and flows of the pandemic,” Winton recalls. “We were all in shock. We took some time to try and figure out what we were going to do, but there was nothing else, really, for us in terms of continuing to dance in, and for, Aspen.”
With a resume that includes training at the prestigious San Francisco Ballet School, holding a long-term position with the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago, playing the role of Penny in the national Broadway tour of Dirty Dancing, and appearing in the CBS television series Bull, Winton could have easily found her next gig elsewhere. But her heart and her community were in Aspen.
Enlisting the help of four of her fellow former ASFB artists, she launched DanceAspen with a sold-out performance at the Wheeler Opera House in September 2021. Since then, she’s added three more artists to the DanceAspen residency roster, including breakout star Sammy Altenau. “I’ve worked with organizations whose directors have ‘danced in my shoes,’ but a lot of them decided what they wanted their organizations to look like long before I ever came into the picture,” Altenau says. “Laurel is now our leader, but she remains deep in both the creative and performative space. She’s had enough experience to know what her strengths are and what needs to happen to bring amazing culture to a community, and she has an immense curiosity for what it means to direct a company, with a role that’s constantly changing from boss, administrator, and fundraiser to performer, stage manager, and every other function of a company you can think of.”
DanceAspen is truly grassroots, with Winton and her artists wearing multiple hats behind the curtain. DanceAspen artist, company manager, and marketing director Kaya Wolsey, who has worked alongside Winton since its inception, explains, “In a traditional company, a dancer’s primary responsibility is to show up and perform. This singular focus allows for undivided attention on dancing and physical well-being. However, in the long term, this approach may hinder a dancer’s career longevity. Many dancers retire without having the chance to explore other facets of this world or to nurture their broader interests.”
As for Winton, it’s her role as a performer that’s been on the back burner as she builds DanceAspen. With an established list of donors—many of whom have supported ASFB in the past—she’s mainly focused on fundraising and is currently in the middle of a campaign to raise $100,000 to be matched by the famed and philanthropic Estée Lauder family. From there, the focus will be holding auditions to bring new artists into the fold.
When the artists of DanceAspen reconvene for the upcoming season, the tight-knit group will spend five days a week in the studio, honing their skills in technique classes and rehearsals from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in preparation for two winter performances at the Wheeler Opera House and others still to be announced.
“It’s really been an amazing journey already,” Winton says. “Usually you build consistency and sustainability with a company over a very long period of time, but we’ve gotten to a pretty good point in just two and a half years where we can start to ask, ‘How are we going to grow?’ Not, ‘Are we going to continue to exist?’ To begin to plan further out is really exciting—I just want to keep the momentum going.”