Electronic Press Kit.
Halie Bahr
Halie Bahr (she/hers) is a choreographer and performer who makes dances that look and feel like puzzles. With equal parts sincerity and spectacle, she creates fragmented, high-contrast dances that hone in on experiences of trauma and recovery. There is a tongue-and-cheek-ness to her creative work — bright colors, grungy aesthetics, glitter, and peculiarly illegible scenes. There is a cringeworthy-ness, a moving towards with tenacity, a crass spectacle that toggles with sincerity. Halie has presented work and performed nationally in venues such as The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN), Movement Research at the Judson Church (New York, NY), and Links Hall (Chicago, IL).
Halie has served as a Rehearsal Director for world-renowned artists such as Anouk van Dijk, creator of CounterTechnique© and former Artistic Director of Chunky Move, Darrell Grand Moultrie, and Lauren Edson. She has performed for a variety of artists, including works by Leyya Mona Tawil (2019 Bessie), Stephan Koplowitz, Merce Cunningham, and Trisha Brown, among many others.
She was awarded the Utah Division of Arts & Museums Performing Arts Fellowship (2024) for her distinguished professional career advancement within the State of Utah. Halie holds her MFA from the University of Utah School of Dance. She loves creating both performances and building communities that are playful, sincere, candy-colored-bright, visceral, over-the-top-spectacles that pull at your heartstrings or make us re-think our world.
“we are easily distracted by shiny things” (2024-2025)
20 Minutes
Human Resources/HR Department is a highly collaborative dance collective established by Halie Bahr, Jessica Boone, and Virginia Broyles. We value both the intricate creation of innovative choreography and reimagining how our work can rub against systemic oppression. By contemplating the impacts of late-stage capitalism on bodies and dancemaking practices, we ask ourselves how imagination and choreography can transform how we make sense of our world. As a collective, we love to play with absurdity, vulnerability, and fragmentation in both vision and physicality to design dreamscapes and highlight humanness in our creative work.
Choreography and Performance: Halie Bahr, Jessica Boone, Virginia Broyles
Sound: Daniel Clifton
***This work was made possible by Westminster University, Dance Class for Humans, and the fiscal support of Texas A&M University and Southern Utah University.
Public Performances:
— May 12, 2025, Movement Research at the Judson Church, New York, NY
— July 15 - 19, 2024, Westminster University, Salt Lake City, UT
— January 2-7, 2024, Southern Utah University, Cedar City, UT
— July 21-23, 2023, Salt Lake City Public Library, Salt Lake City, UT
Photos by Rachel Keane
Baby Pink (2022-2025)
8 Minutes
This dance is an an ever-changing solo built on bodily trust and belief in our changing bodies. Halie tethers between two colliding memoirs that serve as memorial to Intimate Partner Violence. We unlock, slip, and slice through story to arrive at a slow and steady ‘bright’. This sweet yet strident performance unearths violence through sincerity. ‘Baby Pink” is the second solo in a triptych about womanhood, questioning systems of power, violence, pleasure, and belief. The personal narrative from this work was initially created through Bahr’s thesis publication “Plotting Dissonance: Paradoxes of Trauma and Imagination in the Creative Process”, and was inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s Recollections of My Non-Existence, Maggie Nelson’s Bluets and The Argonaunts.
Choreography, Performance & Projection: Halie Bahr
Sound: Script written and read by Halie Bahr, Auld Lang Syne by Guy Lombardo
Dramaturgy: Virginia Broyles
***This work was made possible by Davidson College’s Faculty Research Support.
Public Performances:
— November 1-4, Faculty Dance Concert, Southern Utah University, Cedar City, UT
— September 15, 2024, 12 Minutes Max, Salt Lake City Public Library, Salt Lake City, UT
— November 20, 2022, Commissioned by loveDANCEmore, Spyhop, Salt Lake City, UT
Handwritten Text from Bahr’s “Plotting Dissonance”
Photos by Ashley Deran
Where do we go from here? (2024-2025)
18 Minutes
The third and final solo in a triptych about womanhood, questioning systems of power, violence, pleasure, and belief. In this work, Bahr forefronts stories that often go unseen and untold. Inspired by Solnit’s Recollections of My Non-Existence, Cecelia Condit’s “I’ve Been Afraid”, and the work of Kathleen Hanna/Bikini Kill, Bahr transforms her performing body into a multiplicity of women — spanning over hundreds of years — to radiate questions: how do you know when you feel something? How do we make networks of survivance more visible? How do we buoy ourselves out of affliction to become larger than our worst experiences? In other words, “Where do we go from here?”
This experimental dance turned playwright premiered in August in 2024 as part of University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee’s Alumni Incubator Residency. Bahr is currently working with dance students at Southern Utah University, in collaboration with SUU’s Counseling and Psychological Services, to re-stage this work in Faculty Dance Concert, November 1-4, 2024.
Choreography and Performance: Halie Bahr
Sound: Script written and read by Halie Bahr, Excerpt of Shallow by Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga
Dramaturgy: Alexandra Barbier
Collaboration: Dr. Sarah Brucia Breitenfeld in reference to Levin-Richardson’s work in “The Brothel of Pompeii: Sex, Class, and Gender at the Margins of Roman Society”
***This work was made possible by the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee’s Alumni Incubation Residency Program and the fiscal support of Southern Utah University’s Faculty Development Support Funds
Public Performances:
— November 1-4, 2024, Faculty Dance Concert, Southern Utah University, Cedar City, UT
— August 23, 2024, End-of-Residency Public Showing, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI
Photos by Ashley Deran
Up & Coming (2019-2023)
18 minutes
Breezy bodies full of whimsy inflate us with hope --- but in this world, humor and heartbreak are packaged as one. 'Up & Coming’ articulates loss, loneliness, and love through a collage of vignettes while using wacky-wavey-inflatable-wind-puppets. The inflatable, air-filled dancers rise and deflate, sometimes tragically into lifeless cloth. Disturbing images are juxtaposed with joy and reverie as Bahr reenacts scenes on romance, care, disappointment, pain, and relief. This surprising, and sometimes jarring, composition stitches together fragments to tell a heartfelt story of grief and transformation.
‘Up & Coming’ is the first solo in a triptych about womanhood, questioning systems of power, violence, pleasure, and belief. It is a fan favorite, adored by many, and etches your memory each time you see these sad-but-blowy-used-car-dealership-sales-tactics.
Choreography and Performance: Halie Bahr
Sound: Sleepwalker by Santo & Johnny, Voicemail by Unknown and Saturday Cycles, Love Hurts by Nazareth, Fireworks by Joost Brombacher, Away in a Manger by Martin Luther and sung by Bahr
***This work was made possible by fiscal support of Utah Arts and Museum’s Career Advancement Scholarship. Special thanks to the University of Utah School of Dance MFA Program including Satu Hummasti, Elliott Keller, and Hannah Fischer.
Public Performances:
— March 24, 2023, LadyfestCLT, Goodyear Arts, Charlotte, NC
— March 4-6, 2022, Midwest RAD Festival, Epic Theater, Kalamazoo, MI
— December 6, 2019, University of Utah, Hayes Christensen Theater, Salt Lake City, UT
Photos by Tori Duhaime and Steve Pilker