Stewart/Owen Dance: Creating Movement in Asheville

Profile by Asheville Guide. Photography by Anthony Bellemare.

Vanessa Owen and Gavin Stewart by Anthony Bellemare.

In a town where the arts often teeter between passion and practicality, Stewart/Owen Dance is creating more than a performance—they’re crafting a vision for what dance can mean in Asheville. From touring as a form of cultural diplomacy to parking lot performances during the pandemic, Vanessa Owen and Gavin Stewart are reimagining the boundaries of their art while holding tightly to its core: movement that matters. But in Asheville, where art lives in tension with a service-based economy and creative labor is often underpaid or undervalued, the work of sustaining a dance company is as much about cultural diplomacy as it is about choreography.

Vanessa and Gavin’s Asheville story began almost accidentally. “We were working with a company in D.C. that did international touring through the State Department,” Vanessa explains. “But anytime we were laid off, we’d come back to Asheville, live in the woods, work at my family’s greenhouse, and then go back to a dance job.” When they decided to leave the company for good, they thought Asheville would be a temporary reset. “But we never left,” Vanessa laughs.

Vanessa Owen and Gavin Stewart by Anthony Bellemare.

For years, the pair freelanced, spending most of their time on the road. But the pandemic grounded them—and, in many ways, gave them a chance to grow.

“We started to connect with the dancers that are in this community and with musicians, artists, writers,” Gavin recalls. “We did a lot of cool projects during that time, during the pandemic, with local artists. It was really cross-genre because we didn’t really have a company. It was just Vanessa and I collaborating to make dances together. It was a creative project.”

During the lockdown, Vanessa and Gavin were invited to create a show in a parking lot—a mask-clad, mid-summer experiment in collective resilience. “It was miserable,” Vanessa says. “But it was also incredible because it was the first time we’d been around people in so long.” That parking lot performance became a turning point. The Wortham Center, which typically focused on touring acts, offered them space to create. “They couldn’t bring in artists, so they just said, ‘If you want to make something, use the space.’ And we did.” What started as a temporary opportunity has turned into a residency and a home base for building their vision.

Stewart/Owen Dance has become both a company and a community resource, offering adult dance classes that fill a notable gap in Asheville’s arts ecosystem. “we hear [it] all the time, ‘I danced my whole life, and then I stopped,’” Vanessa notes. "If you progress through dances as a kid, you reach a certain aptitude [where] you don't want to take an intro level class every single time," Stewart adds. Suggesting that the gap is in the inability of someone to "come back to something that's familiar.". He continues, "It's never easy. Even now, we're professionals, and we still struggle. I mean, and that's the ongoing process. But you know, if you have the aptitude for that - and so many kids from Asheville do - there's not quite a space for [you]."

"So the grand vision, of course, is to be able to offer anybody who wants to live a life dedicated to dance in whatever way they want to do it, a place for them to do that. And that's takes a lot of work.”

But their mission goes beyond the recreational classes. The company is laser-focused on supporting professional dancers and dismantling barriers that make dance careers inaccessible. “We are both people [who] will find the gaps in something and try to fill them.,” Gavin says. “Anybody who passes through this town who is serious about dance and has dedicated their life to it and is a professional, why would they ever stay? And not just this town, but the South in general,” Vanessa adds. "And the conversations around professional performance here?

"We realized people don't think that artists should be paid. They think that it should be a community organization."

This is not a new concept nor a novel observation. Many cities and generations have told the story of the struggling artists next to the trust fund creative - suggesting one must work poor or be born rich to pursue the arts. Perhaps the most radical for Stewart/Owen is the notion that they believe in the value of work. "Our dancers, when we hire them, they're dancing like 40 hours a week, right? They can't do other jobs at the same time." Pushing that classic rock up the hill that is Asheville's culture and economic landscape is its own challenge.

“As soon as we got here, we realized that there are very few people placing the value on the artist,” Vanessa observes. For me, realizing how much work "the" does in her statement felt like an almost romantic criticism of the world at large. So I had to ask.... "Why?". Why dance? Why here? Why them?

Vanessa Owen and Gavin Stewart by Anthony Bellemare.

"I'm addicted to making things, to creativity, addicted to movement. You could say in love. You could say addicted. I'm not sure. So that's like, why make dance, right?" She starts. "I feel like I can't live without it, you know? But why make dance here in Asheville? Be a director, deal with all the other things we deal with, why do all of that? And I think it's because I feel like the moments where I've been able to provide something for someone that I wish I'd been provided with .... when that is married to the the creative dance making part of me, and it's a gift to somebody that I didn't get.... that is why "

"It's kind of hard to explain, but I think that's why we do most things we do..."It's like, no one ever treated me fairly, you know? Or no one ever,.... whatever it is. Like, I never got paid that much, or ... no one gave me my schedule two days beforehand. Whatever it is, you know, we're just constantly trying to make up for all the things...."

Such a calling could drive anyone to dream and sustain. However, an even more nuanced tension between artistic freedom and financial sustainability still lingers. The Wortham’s audiences skew slightly older and more traditional in their tastes, inviting Stewart/Owen to meet them where they are—while nudging them toward something new. “We’re like a gateway drug,” Vanessa jokes. “We’re trying to challenge audiences without alienating them.”

Stewart/Owen Dance is currently raising funds to expand its programming and sustain its company. This includes scholarships for their summer program, fair wages for dancers and resources to deepen their community engagement. But their long-term vision is even bigger. I asked what would happen if they raised a ton of money. “If someone handed us $10 million tomorrow?” they muse. “We’d build a sustainable business," Gavin jokes. "It’s a personnel problem more than anything—we’re not going to run a volunteer organization,” Vanessa declares.

And while the legitimacy and efficiency of their dance business is key, this isn’t just a profession; it’s who they are. "I’ve never done any other work besides be a dancer or a choreographer. Now a director, now an administrator, et cetera. But I’ve never done any other work that wasn’t dance. I just can’t. That’s the only thing I think I’ve ever wanted to do." Gavin says.

"I kept getting more and more obsessed with the craft of dancing, with the performing of dancing, with —I don’t know—with everything about it. How it could relate to everything."

Is clear that Stewart/Owen Dance is more than a performance company—they are call to action. To observe. To respect your employees and your audience. To remember your training and your roots. To dance. And perhaps most ambitious of them all, to follow your heart. Their work demonstrates that even in a city where creative labor often goes undervalued, bridging the gaps is both necessary and transformative.