Year 4, Thriving Then Surviving

Basin Arts started Year 4 (Aug. 2019-Aug 2020) with packed open classes and the premiere of SPORT SUITES from Basin Dance Collective. After a few years of growing project-based work, Basin Dance Collective expanded its platform at in 2019 to contract six local professional dancers for a full year of performances across the region including a SPORT SUITES educational tour to area schools as part of AcA's Touring Arts program. (Also, it was a year for new Basin babies!)

At the start of Year 4, Basin Arts opened up additional visual artist studio space which quickly filled up to house ten artists-in-residence within our building. Kristie Mayeaux became our curator to steward a Fall season of exhibitions from local artists Rachel Perry, Bob Borel, Aileen Bennett & Gina Aswell, and Susan David, along with a group exhibition from our Resident Artists in January 2020.

March 2020 kicked off with the City of Lafayette proclaiming March as Acadiana Dance Month just days before an unprecedented global pandemic brought the world to a standstill. Basin Arts quickly began offering online programming, from dance classes to virtual studio tours to instagram live artist talks with artists from around the world. Also, the BARE Walls program kept on going and growing, and we started doing our installations fully masked.

During this time of great uncertainty, we kept moving and did all that we could to keep our artistic community surviving and thriving. New ideas started to bubble up, creative solutions stepped forth, and we started to set the stage for Year 5 — stay tuned for next week's memory!