Leah Stein BIO

Leah Stein is the artistic director and founder of Leah Stein Dance Company, recently celebrating its 20th Anniversary Season. Originally from the Hudson Valley New York, Leah Stein has been living and making dances in Philadelphia for three decades and moved to Vermont in 2020 to care for her mother. A sensitive and unique performer immersed in site-inspired improvisation as a tool and expression, her work has been performed in galleries, theaters, museums, outdoor sites, across the US and internationally in Indonesia, Canada, Poland, Romania, Mexico, Japan, and Scotland. Among her major works are collaborations with composers Pauline Oliveros (Urban Echo), David Lang (battle hymns), and Byron Au Yong (Turbine), all involving Mendelsohn Club Chorus under the direction of Alan Harler. Among her recent small scale site works are Close to Home, Held Sky, Portraits and 

Stein is a 2018 Pew Fellow has been awarded numerous grants from Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, the Leeway Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts including three Fellowships in Choreography, and Independence Foundation Fellowship. Stein was awarded a Herald Angel Award for her work “In Situ” at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. In 2014, LSDC engaged in a yearlong research project guided by composer Pauline Oliveros; An inquiry into forging an improvisational, compositional practice for voice and movement. Stein received a MacDowell Fellowship in 2019 where she began research on a new solo work “Secondary Succession” that premiered in Philadelphia in 2020, right before the pandemic. 

Stein is a passionate educator and has worked with young people throughout the Philadelphia region and developed an annual residency program creating site-specific performance works at magnet high school Science Leadership Academy. Stein has taught extensively at Swarthmore College, Bryn Mawr College and held a full-time Guest Artist Visiting Professor position at Drexel University in 2014. She offers ongoing open workshops in Voice/Movement practice in the Upper Valley since moving here in 2020.