In 2013, dancer and musician Leah Casper was struggling to find a band or performance troupe that fit her skills, style and schedule.

“Being a single mother of two, it was important for me to continue making music and performance art,” she says. “I had to work full time, and joining another band or dance company wasn’t compatible with my lifestyle as a single mother. Also, I never quite seemed to be a good fit for other dance companies or bands. But I knew there had to be other dancers and musicians that felt like me, and I found them.”

Once she did, she established her own collaborative music, dance, fashion and art collaboration, LuneAseas. “It soon developed into a much larger project and has become a refuge for dancers, musicians and creatives who are drawn to reimagining ways to create and present their work,” says Casper.

Westword: Tell me about the origin of the festival.

Leah Casper:  Last year we built a production called Le Voyage Dans La Lune, based on the work of Georges Méliès. My partner Steve and I were playing around creating characters based on silent-film stars, and thought it would be cool to get a group of musicians together to improv to silent films and see what kind of music and sounds we can discover by watching movement. This idea has been the basis of LuneAseas’s sound for the past couple of seasons, but we wanted to see what happens when we bring more collaborators into that world…

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