The festival is a place where artists can come together to share, learn, and be held accountable for the work we produce.  The following objectives are relevant to our commitment to helping Exchange be a positive artistic force in the Tulsa community:

  • To bring pre-professional and professional dance artists together for an exchange of ideas and processes.
  • To challenge current ways of doing and being in the dance field – as in choreography, performance, traditional dance practices, ways of making work, body image, etc.
  • To showcase contemporary dance forms to the Tulsa community.
  • To provide a place for intellectual and kinesthetic education through relational contact.
  • To foster a healthy atmosphere for experiencing and critiquing dance choreography and performance. 

About Us

EXCHANGE is a program of curated dance performances of choreographed works as well as workshops and networking events designed to foster dialogue. The events are centered around moderated audience/colleague discussions to support, explore and inform the artists' process.

EXCHANGE provides a meeting point for professional dancers to showcase their choreographic work and engage in dialogue about process. The mission of EXCHANGE is to facilitate collaboration of ideas and people in the choreographic process. It is our belief that people furthering dance for dances’ sake is not enough. Dance should further people and relationships between people, therefore fueling the generative nature of ideas.

EXCHANGE Choreography Festival:
​More than Movement

The essence of BHA’s mission & vision is being brought to action in The Exchange Dance Festival.
This is the heart of The Bell House ~
The choreographic form remains to be dance’s most explored genre.  However lived in, THE BELL HOUSE’s foot traffic comes from all over the globe. In the process of making dance, many artists not living in the same town but wanting to work together proves to be challenging.  Like most problems to solve in dance-making for stage, querying problems of geographical location opens up the possibilities for the choreographic form to manifest through non-traditional processes.  Artists with a stage dance duet who cannot make a performance together now have options in re-conceptualizing their work in tandem with solo performances or group works that evolve from the vision of a single person, connecting others across the globe.  The possibilities are only widened with the challenges we face. 

Visual artists, musicians, choreographers, performers, photographers, and video/filmmakers are just a few of the wide variety of artists that have visited us and shared their talents.  The collaborative mission of THE BELL HOUSE fosters meeting points between artists in the belief that art has the power to enrich our lives through relationship, not simply for the sake of creating something once notable.

Audiences typically only see the product of our art but can be grossly interested in the process by which the work is made.  Because the artists who visit THE BELL HOUSE come from such vast backgrounds in training, the work produced here is innately informed by visual design.  The goal is to let that infusion happen as collaborations evolve – the photographic to the dance, the visual art to the music.  There’s no one-way to cross from room to room; why should our vision be any less open? 

The festival gives emerging and professional dancers the opportunity to showcase their choreographic works and engage in discussion about the process of making those works with the dance community. Workshops, networking events, dialogue and performance are also included in the festival weekend.
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​We do our best to document the collaborative process of any project and bring the essence of what was made visible to our audiences; our goal being to boost the artist’s visual resources to promote themselves in order to keep making work in the future. 

Who We Are
The Exchange Choreography Festival's mission to facilitate collaboration of ideas and people in the choreographic process. It is our belief that people furthering dance for dances’ sake is not enough. Dance should further people and relationships between people, therefore fueling the generative nature of ideas.

Our History
EXCHANGE premiered in 2009 as an adjudication series of curated concerts. The weekend included adjudicated feedback, workshops on choreography and performance, as well as opportunities to dance jam with other new artists.

​In 2011 & 2012, the festival refined its vision moving from an adjudicated style to a round-table style of engaging artists in dialogue about what processes went into the creation of work presented as well as ideas about movement and embodiment. Still offering various workshops on choreography, performance and technique vocabularies, EXCHANGE moved toward creating an atmosphere of exploration about process and methods as well as toward an energy of speaking with fellow artists about ideas and what exactly sparked the development of the dance works artists are currently interested in making. 

We continue to refine this process, designing each year's festival as a unique experience of work, discussion and presentation. 

In 2016 & 2017, the festival recreated the festival model entirely to host a choreographic educator.  Richly experienced in the field, Featured Artists come to the festival for a concentrated time of dialogue about dance-making, engagement, and seeing connections with festival participants. 

​2018 & 2019 brought a new conference-style festival model where presenting artists could show their work in 1 of 3 informal showings at a state-of-the-art venue. While the stage is distilled to one, simple lighting look, the performances still have a professional feel where artists can present their work to an intimate audience followed by a simple Q&A. The festival also features round table discussions and networking events. Because the festival runs tandem with Summer Heat International Dance Festival, we are able to host a master class and/or lecture from well-known, international artists and take advantage of tickets to their festival performances throughout the weekend. 

2020 has shaken us with a world-wide COVID-19 pandemic, but we are fortunate in this country to have a myriad of technology at our fingertips already integrated into most of our lives. So, we will be moving the festival online for the first time in our history. While we hope and, arguably, need to meet face to face in the field of dance, there may be some elements that feel very affirming and find their way into future festivals. We're ready move and shift and pivot our way there.