ALEXANDRA BASSKIAKOU SHAW
Alexandra Basskiakou Shaw is a Co-Producing Artistic Director of Rude Mechs theatre collective with whom she performs in Not Every Mountain (Guthrie Theater world premiere) and Contranyms (Fusebox Festival), directs solo performances by Kirk Lynn called The Cold Record (Under the Radar Festival) and I Am Brothers (Penrose Far West), directed the B. Iden Payne award-winning Fixing Troilus and Cressida, and is currently co-creating an adaptation of Thornton Wilder's Our Town.
In Austin, she directed the regional premiere of Kirk Lynn’s Your Mother’s Copy of the Kama Sutra (Present Company); Anne Carson's Antigonick (Mary Moody Nothern Theatre); the national premiere of Megan Tabaque's Decapitations (Salvage Vanguard Theatre); the national premiere of Mouthful a series of interconnected plays by by Inua Elams, Neil Labute, Lydia Adetunji, Bola Agbaje, Clare Bayley, and Pedro Rozo; Joanna Garner’s The Orange Garden (UT Austin) and Patrick Shaw’s Operation Istanbul (Cohen New Works Festival). She is an associate artist with paper chairs with whom she performed in Elizabeth Doss’ Catalina d’Erauso and The Divine Narcissus.
Alex is the Producing Artistic Director of the UTNT New Theatre festival and teaches directing and playwriting at the University of Texas at Austin.
JENNIFER HART
photo by Sarah Annie Navarrete
Hailed as a choreographer “with an imagination so exuberant that one could not be sure how one movement led to the next” and “not only inventive but heart-rending,” Jennifer Hart has been commissioned by Ballet Austin, Ballet Austin ll, Ballet Nouveau Colorado (now Wonderbound), James Sewell Ballet, Minnesota Dance Theater, The Walker Art Center’s Momentum Series, The McKnight Fellowship for Dancers, Metropolitan Ballet Project, University of Kansas, University of Massachusetts, Lawrence Ballet Theatre, Halcyon Dance Project in San Francisco, and Merick Strategies for its production of Leonard Bernstein's “Mass” and “Icons of Broadway Holiday Spectacular.” In July, 2022, Hart was one of four choreographers selected for National Choreographers Initiative.
In 2011, Hart was awarded a New York City Ballet Fellowship and won third place at the Saint-Sauveur International Choreography Competition. She received second place at Ballet Nouveau Colorado’s choreography competition, and was one of three winners of the University of Kansas’ competitive choreography competition. She was chosen three times to present work at Ballet Builders, New Choreographer’s on Point in NYC. She was commissioned by University of Massachusetts in the fall of 2013; the work was chosen for the National College Dance Festival at the Kennedy Center, June 2014.
In 2014, she formed Performa/Dance with Ballet Austin dancer Edward Carr. Performa/Dance launched its inaugural show. Ignite: Three Works, in June, 2014. Her work for Performa/Dance was awarded four Austin Critics Table awards for Best Short Work (“On Truth and Love”and "Camille: A Story of Art and Love"), Best Choreographer ("Fellow Travelers" and “Murmuration"), and Best Dance Concert (Ignite: Three Works). Along with her work in concert dance, she has choreographed and performed cabaret shorts for nightclubs and television, and has begun working in video. She recently choreographed and co-directed the epic Bernstein's Mass, a work involving 300 performers.
She trained at Minnesota Dance Theatre, Pacific Northwest Ballet and San Francisco Ballet. Her performing career includes Minnesota Dance Theater, Ballet of the Dolls, and L.A Chamber Ballet, as well as independent choreographers. She choreographs for Ballet Austin’s apprentices and Fellowship recipients, teaches full-time in the academy and apprentice program, and serves as Curriculum Supervisor of the school where she sets syllabus and leads training for academy teachers.
KELSEY OLIVER
photo by Sarah Annie Navarrete
Kelsey Oliver’s Austin-born butt went from competition kid to drill team baby to experimental academic…currently resonating as a physical theatre enthusiast, improvisor, and momentumous floorwork practitioner. Most often a choreographer, performer, and costumer, KO loves making artistic dive-ins in an evolving slew of mediums. She’s ½ of Torko Rover, a multi-medium production duo that is crafting gay performance ahrt in non-traditional spaces. Routinely in scrappy, maximalist, humor-struck collaborations, KO has co-created works with Frank Wo/Men Collective, Rude Mechanicals, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, JKJK, Performa/Dance, Magdalena Jarkowiec, Heloise Gold, Ground Floor Theatre, Thee Gay Agenda, Erica Saucedo, Body Shift, Mama Duke, + more. Her costume concoctions and stylings have landed in work by UT’s Fall For Dance, Frank Wo/Men Collective, Performa/Dance, Erica Saucedo, Heloise Gold, Austin Community College, The Reverie, and several other dance/theatre thangs. In academic regards, KO received a B.F.A. in Dance in 2015, studying at the University of Texas at Austin and short-term Le Centre National de Danse Contemporaine in Angers, France. She has been an adjudicator, choreographer, and dance instructor for studios and teams throughout Texas. In recent years, The Dance Spot and Balance Dance Studios have been her main teaching sink-ins, and the kiddos she teaches bring her so so much joy (and continue to allow her to access her kid self :P). In a nutshell, she likes durational stuff, absurdist stuff, devised stuff, funny stuff, and stuff that gets soakingly athletic. She also loves her queer family with 4 fur floof children.