St. Olaf - Base & Perch Dance Company
In 2024, St. Olaf students Bryn Fitzgerald-Wells and Bea Beaman founded Base & Perch, a dance company focused on partnering and contact improvisation.
Purpose Statement:
"Base & Perch is a dance company focusing on various forms of partnering. Through the teaching, promotion, and exhibition of partnering, we aim to create a community of trust and connection."
Base & Perch holds rehearsals and open practices dedicated to furthering dance skills. The company also performs at St. Olaf.
From 2006 to 2016, St. Olaf's dance department offered Power Play, a course incorporating contact improvisation alongside other dance forms like Capoeira. This class was taught by Sherry Saterstrom, an alumnus of St. Olaf who returned to teach years later.
Dancers practice a lift at an early Base & Perch rehearsal.
From 2014 to 2016, St. Olaf offered two additional classes relating to CI: Contact Improvisation and Improvisation: Practice and Performance. The classes were unfortunately discontinued in 2017.
Contact Improvisation at St. Olaf was not just a movement-based class, but also incorporated research. Power Play was a prerequisite for Contact Improvisation.
Fresh Space
In 2025 Base & Perch performed in St. Olaf's annual concert, Fresh Space. The company choreographs and performs dances on a semi-regular basis.
In 2017, Topics in Movement Studies in Dance replaced all the previous contact improvisation-related classes at St. Olaf. The course does not necessarily include contact improv, although it's on the list of possible topics.
Many thanks to Abby Sikora for providing photographs and other material about Base & Perch!