Clare Cook
Clare Cook is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, and community collaborator with a deep commitment to dance and the power of the arts to effect change. After a decade of working in NYC, Cook returned to Lafayette, La in 2016 with an MFA in Dance from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts inspired to invest her time and talent in her hometown's burgeoning arts community. She is the Founder and Creative Director of Basin Arts as well as the Artistic Director of Basin Dance Collective. Under her leadership, Basin Arts has become a leading arts incubator and community space for local artists in the Acadiana area. The non-profit organization provides resident artist workspaces, community dance classes for kids and adults, an active art gallery and project exhibition space, and a vast array of community programming to support independent artists of all disciplines. Basin Arts is also the home of the BARE Walls program, a unique art subscription program pairing local artists with local business, and is the home to Basin Dance Collective, the area's first professional contemporary dance company in over 25 years. Basin Arts has received grant support from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Lafayette Consolidated Government, Lafayette Convention and Visitors Commission, Acadiana Center for the Arts, Lafayette Economic Development Authority, Junior League of Lafayette, Haynie Family Foundation, Dolly Hawthorne Foundation, and the David Egan Dreamer Fund.