MSP 176: Clare Cook

PODCAST 176: Clare Cook

Release Date: 9.30.24

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Cultivating Genuine Connections with Clare Cook

Episode 176: Show Notes

Our guest today is the remarkable Clare Cook. Based in Lafayette, Louisiana, Clare is the Founder and Creative Director of Basin Arts, a non-profit arts incubator dedicated to helping Louisiana artists develop sustainable creative practices. Basin Arts aims to expand access to professional contemporary arts experiences while fostering genuine connections between artists and the broader community. In our interview, we explore how dance was positively cultivated in different spaces throughout her life, what she’s grateful for, and unpack her decision to pursue a life in dance. She shares insights into being the youngest in her NYU Tisch Dance program, her passion for storytelling and collaboration, and her interest in the theatre-dance hybrid. We also discuss her experience with an observership, the decision to return to Lafayette, and go deeper into the heart and vision behind Basin Arts. For all this and much more, be sure to tune in!

Key Points From This Episode:

We’re introduced to our guest Clare Cook and her life and dance journey.
She reflects on how dance was cultivated in different spaces throughout her life and what she’s grateful for.
Clare unpacks her decision to pursue a life in dance.
How she thought of dance as a way to become more of herself.
Being the youngest dancer in the NYU Tisch Dance program.
Her love and interest in storytelling and collaboration.
How she got her first gig choreographing a musical.
She talks about her interest in the theatre-dance hybrid.
Clare shares about her opportunity to do an observership.
The impetus to move back to Louisiana and what it was like navigating that transition.
How the concept for Basin Arts started to unfold.
She speaks to the idea of trajectory as continued evolution along the path of creative process, collaboration, and community.
Clare breaks down what creating authentic relationships with the community looks like through Basin Arts.
What Basin Arts is all about and the heart of their goals.
Clare shares what she’s excited about and upcoming events.

“[Basin Arts] was this idea of how can we, in the simplest, least encumbered way, find a space for people to come together and do their work.” — Clare Cook

ABOUT Clare

Clare Cook (Choreographer) is a hyphenate artist working simultaneously as a choreographer, dancer, teacher, and arts administrator through her work as Founder & Creative Director of Basin Arts, a interdisciplinary arts incubator in Lafayette, La. Throughout Louisiana, she can be found creating dances, facilitating artistic opportunities for others, advocating for new models integrating the arts, and envisioning a more sustainable arts ecosystem for all. Past dance projects include presenting choreography at Joe’s Pub/DanceNOW Festival, the New York Musical Theatre Festival, Triskelion Arts, Opera Slavica, Columbia University, NYU, and the New School for Drama. Clare was the choreographer for the First National Tour of Bullets Over Broadway, re-setting Susan Stroman’s Tony-Nominated choreography, and traveled to Bulgaria with the Drama League of NYC to choreograph the Sofia Puppet Theatre of Bulgaria’s American Musical Theatre Showcase. Recent performance projects include Full Head of Hair with Elana Jacobs (CabinFever Live Art), The Panic of Fixing Things with visual artist Hagit Barkai, Paige Barnett’s A Song of Visions, and Ten Tiny Dances – Lafayette. She has presented work at the Acadiana Center for the Arts, Hilliard Art Museum, with the Acadiana Symphony Orchestra, and for UL Lafayette’s Dance Program. Clare has been on the faculties of LSU, UL-Lafayette, NYU Tisch Dance, and the Metropolitan Opera Guild. She holds an MFA in Dance from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.