We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Starrene Foster a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Starrene, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

The most meaningful project I have choreographed was a dance titled “In Rest and Sleep”. This work premiered in February 2020 and embraced the ideas of love, loss, reflection, and the wonder of unlimited chances. This evening-length work is unique because it was performed in the round, with the audience encompassing the performance space. The dance begins with the audience entering the space and “preparing” the stage with calla lilies while the dancers lay prone on their backs. It’s a rather somber introduction. However, this beginning sets the tone for a fully immersive experience, allowing the audience to immediately engage deeply with the environment.
I began creating this work after experiencing quite a lot of loss in my life. I wanted to dive into ideas of how we each deal with grief so differently and how loss can be a substantial life-altering experience. I wanted to create a relatable work so that people would see themselves and their experiences in the movement. We all grieve so differently and loss changes each of us in incomparable ways. My goal was to capture, through movement, the deep devotion and enchantment we have in our relationships, with the intention that the audience would be able to create their own personal narrative. This work required a substantial emotional investment from the performers, who instilled incredible beauty in the vision.
The timing of this project also resonated with all of us in the company because everything shut down two weeks after our premiere. It felt profound to present a deeply emotional work and then suddenly unable to continue creating in the studio to move forward with our creative projects.
We successfully restaged “In Rest and Sleep” in 2023 for five sold-old shows in Richmond, Virginia. As a creator, it is vital that work can be “timeless” and continue to be relevant. It is encouraging that this dance, which carried so much meaning for me, continued to be well received. One of my favorite review quotes came from our 2023 performance:
“The work is marked by a virtuosity of contrasts that gently wrestles the audience into contemplative silence. In Rest and Sleep is more than choreography – it is therapy. It encourages us to re-examine memories, voices, and lessons from the past in new ways that make them sustenance for the present and fuel for the future.”

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Starrene Foster, and I am the Founder and Artistic Director of Starr Foster Dance, an award-winning contemporary dance company based in Richmond, Virginia. I began choreographing independently throughout my college years and then formally established the company in 2004. Starr Foster Dance has undergone many shifts and changes over the years, though the one thing that has remained the same is its mission to engage with the community by collaborating with all types of artists and providing other artists opportunities.
In 2003 I established the Mid-Atlantic Choreographers Showcase, which has provided opportunities to over 250 dance makers from the Mid-Atlantic Region in the last 20 years. This festival was originally created because finding opportunities to present new work was nearly impossible. The festivals available to dance artists at the time were all searching for dance works that had already been produced, leaving the new artists and artists wanting to experiment with new ideas, no vessel to present their work.
To engage with a broader group of artists, I created the Page to Stage Dance Series in 2015, a collaboration with writers, and then the Spitting Image Series, a collaboration with photographers was established in 2018. Both productions foster the idea of merging interdisciplinary practices and provide opportunities for community artists. In both Spitting Image and Page to Stage, we can also offer short-term contracts to dancers from the community to share the stage with the company dancers.
In 2010, Starr Foster Dance established a mentorship program for young dancers. I feel strongly that exposing young dancers who wish to have a professional career in dance (either as a performer, choreographer, director, or even in the field of dance administration) that it is important to offer a space where young dancers can immerse themselves in a professional and safe experience. The student is selected through an application process, and they are chosen based on their ability to illustrate a high level of talent, a strong work ethic, and professionalism in the field of dance.

I have been very grateful to have received numerous awards and recognition for teaching and choreography, and the company dancers have been praised abundantly for their performances. Each year, we strive to advance our mission by discovering new ways to enrich the world with more art and make dance accessible and inclusive for all audiences. It is important to me to create emotionally resonant works that embrace the human spirit and remain relevant to our times.
We ended our 2024 in a great way, with the Virginia Dance Awards awarding us the “2024 Best Professional Dance Company of the Year” award and CultureWorksRVA granting us a “Building Capabilities” grant.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My goal is to create art that makes people feel something. My hope is that our audiences leave our performances feeling more engaged and sensitive to their surroundings. If people leave our events thinking about what they just witnessed or want to create their own art, we’ve succeeded.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The big pivot in the company happened during COVID, when the entire performing arts industry shut down. Looking back, this was a time when I reevaluated everything. The big question I was asking myself was: How can dance and the arts continue to be sustainable?
We did what every performing artist did, which was offer virtual engagement. But that was certainly not anything close to presenting a live performance. The company then shifted from nine core members to four, and we were back in the studio in early 2021. We are fortunate enough to be deeply connected in our community, and by the Fall, a local theatre company opened its doors to present performances for us. In October 2021 we presented ten shows in a row, with only 20 audience members at each show. It was strange and exhausting. However, the community was eager for live performances to be back, and we were anxious to be doing what we love. This was a big moment for me to realize that keeping the company smaller, with a consistent five core members, was more economically sustainable (with also the ability to pay them more graciously), and the work was excelling. We have such an intense and intimate creation process that we began to thrive more with fewer company artists. The process was quicker. Trust between the dancers was substantial. Communication improved. It’s a great example of the lesson of “less is more.” So now, the company continues to have five extraordinary dancers, and when there is a need to create dances with more bodies, we invite artists from the community to join us.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.starrfosterdance.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/starrfosterdance/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/starrfosterdance
• Other: https://www.linktree.com/starrfosterdance

Image Credits

Performance photos: Credit Doug Hayes
Headshot photo: Credit Barbara Shore