EMILY HAUSSLER
Director | Choreographer | Teacher | Dancer
Emily Haussler is the Founder and Director of RESILIENCE Dance Company - a nonprofit dance company focused on putting artists first. She works to move the dance world forward by challenging toxic norms and creating sustainable practices that value and prioritize dancers.
Her choreography centers on finding visceral human connections through embodied empathy, vulnerability, and honesty. Most often she creates collaboratively, drawing on her dancers’ voices in addition to improvisational, modern, ballet, and contemporary techniques.
Emily also teaches master classes to university students and organizes mental heath and dance workshops, both of which feed her passion for community work.
DANCE
Emily holds a B.A. in Dance and Biology from Washington University in St. Louis, 2018, and has trained primarily in ballet, modern, and improvisation. She has danced professionally for Common Thread Contemporary Ballet (2017) and Emily Duggins Ehling (2020), and as a Trainee for Nashville Ballet (2018 - 19) and The Big Muddy Dance Company (2019 - 20). Other credits include Karlovsky & Co. Dance (In Transit, 2020) and Washington University Dance Collective (2017 - 18).
Currently, Emily participates in freelance dance projects outside her commitments as director of RESILIENCE Dance Company.
CHOREOGRAPHY
As Director of RESILIENCE Dance Company, Emily has choreographed three full-length works (Stanzas & Sculptures, 2020; Making Room, 2021; All Times at Once, 2022), directed two dance film projects (There Are No Rules, 2020; Collective Realities, 2021), and is currently in process for a new full-length work set to premiere April 2023. Her notable short-form works include An inevitable, undefined you (2022, Southeast Missouri State University), ways to move in harmony (2021, The Link Auditorium, St. Louis MO), ...and there are never endings (2019, American Dance Festival), and In Passing (2018 Washington University in St. Louis, 2019 Looby Theater, Nashville TN).
Prior to founding RDC, Emily produced an independent dance concert entitled fine lines between. The performance premiered in Nashville, TN at the Looby Theater in April 2019, and featured fourteen collaborators in six pieces.
Artistically, Emily enjoys creating new works through conversation, collaboration, and empathy. Her processes include tasks, play, chance, writing, moving from impulses, authentic movement, and more, and always center the dancers as humans first. She finds particular joy in devising new parameters to produce unique dynamics.
For commissions, please see contact form below.
TEACHING
Emily has had the honor of teaching master classes at St. Louis University, Southeast Missouri State University, and at Washington University in St. Louis as the Marcus Artist in Residence, February 2022. She has also taught multiple Self Production workshops for dancers at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Missouri Dance Organization's 2022 Conference, and at the 2022 Central American College Dance Association Conference, where she shares practical information on how to produce independent dance concerts. Additionally, Emily teaches weekly company classes including advanced ballet, modern and improvisation.
For master class inquiries, please fill out the contact form below.