Gaspard&Dancers to Perform in Asheville

The Wortham Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Asheville will present Gaspard&Dancers in concert May 2 and 3, 2025, at 8 p.m.

The company’s founder and artistic director, Haitian-born former Pilobolus dancer Gaspard Louis, has earned international acclaim for his diverse and inclusive company, built upon a shared passion for versatile, inventive and inspiring movement. Louis draws inspiration from, among many other sources, the idea of believing in magic, the search for self-acceptance, and the spiritual practices of his home country.

How far can your imagination take you? Marrying playful physicality with lyrical, athletic partnering, the renowned Gaspard&Dancers consistently produces works of haunting beauty and emotional force, with fluidity of motion that critics have praised as “exuberant,” “organic,” “buoyant” and “floating with natural ease.”

Louis received a BFA in dance from Montclair State University and continued his dance studies on scholarship at Gus Giordano’s in Chicago and Nikolais/Louis Dance Lab in New York. He then joined the New York-based company AllNations, where he performed traditional dances from many parts of the world for US troops across the globe. Subsequently, he performed and traveled worldwide with Pilobolus Dance Theater, collaborating on the choreography of nine major dance works with the company and teaching master dance classes both nationally and internationally.

“The depth and breadth of Gaspard Louis’ choreography, the number of accomplished dancers and collaborations with artists in other fields reaches a new level.” ~ The Herald-Sun

Durham, North Carolina-based Gaspard&Dancers is a group of artistically and athletically gifted dancers. Louis collaborates closely with those dancers to create works that, according to The Five Points Star, “burst the bonds of habit with its heartfelt force … a beautiful example of art expressing feelings for which words are inadequate.”

Home of the venerable American Dance Festival, an international showcase of contemporary dance lauded by The New York Times as “one of the nation’s most important institutions,” Durham is a magnet for international choreographers, dancers, teachers and composers. In 2012, a University of Toronto study singled out Durham for having the country’s “highest concentration of creative class workers.” The city’s dynamic climate has resulted in a thriving arts scene with rich collaboration among creative disciplines. Much of the compelling music that accompanies Gaspard&Dancers’ choreography is the work of local composers.

Louis received an MFA in dance from the Hollins University/American Dance Festival Program and later became the director of ADF’s year-round creative movement outreach program, which provides free dance classes to youth in the Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill communities. Gaspard has also been a guest teacher at Duke, Elon and North Carolina Central Universities.

For more details and tickets, visit worthamarts.org/gaspard-dancers.