little house dance

little house dance is a New England contemporary dance company led by Canadian choreographer Heather Stewart. The company was established in 2020 and is currently based in Portland, ME. After several years of working as an independent artist Heather established little house dance in order to formalize her collaborative relationships with other dancers, musicians, visual artists, and writers. The company’s aim is to foster a democratic working environment where the individual voice is as important as the collective. 

 

Heather Stewart has been creating and presenting original work for performance 2012. Born in Canada, Heather grew up across the South Pacific where she lived in Australia, Papua New Guinea, and Indonesia. After attending Etobicoke School for the Arts in Etobicoke, Canada she went on to live and work in Montreal, London, and Boston. 

 

In the past, Heather’s work has been shortlisted for The Deustche Bank Award for Creative Enterprises and she has received funding and awards from The Boston Foundation, The New England Foundation for the Arts, The Somerville Arts Council, and The Canada Council for the Arts. The development of her choreographic work has been supported by residencies and organizations such as The Boston Center for the Arts, New Movement Collaborative, Espace Marie Chouinard, The Place, Centre de Création O Vertigo (CCOV), Earthdance, Tufts University, and Tanzzentrale der region Nürnberg. Fueled by physicality, her work offers intricate and complex meetings between movement and sound. Heather developed her work in collaboration with Montreal based composer dull from 2012 until his suicide in 2019. Together they worked from a shared vision of performance as a place of refuge from the outside world. Their ongoing partnership was defined by a rigorous, generous, and reciprocal collaboration in which the music and choreography were given equal space and importance. 

 

Heather received her MA in Advanced Dance Studies, with a strong focus in choreography, from The London Contemporary Dance School in 2014. In addition to her creative work Heather is also works as a dance educator. Heather as adjunct faculty at Boston Arts Academy from 2017 – 2019 where she taught contemporary dance, choreography, and classical ballet. She has also had the pleasure of teaching Master Classes at several New England institutions and schools including Moving Target Portland, Moving Target Boston, Tufts University, The Boston Conservatory, and Urbanity.