Leverage is rooted in the Cherokee Street community of St. Louis and offers innovative and distinctive opportunities to a historically underserved population to experience dance in new ways.
The purpose of LVDT’s programming is to contribute to St. Louis’ local arts offerings through the presentation of public dance programming, with a specific intention to: build awareness of and interest in dance and its potential to have a positive impact in our communities; to cultivate new dance audiences; to broaden the views of existing audiences about what dance is and could be; and to offer training and growth to underserved and nontraditional dancers as well as support innovative choreographic opportunity with nationally and internationally recognized dancers.
Our ON-SITE programming brings dance to highly visible, public spaces, to reach diverse groups who live and work in the community, many of whom have limited access to transportation. Tourists and visitors, many from rural midwest counties see Cherokee St as a destination and flock to the unique conglomeration of arts events and street festivals for which it is known. Leverage is the only professional dance company in the area and seeks to add immersive dance performance to the list for which Cherokee Street is a regional destination.
We are a flexibly structured company to provide opportunities for both young artists and those with accumulated knowledge in the field who might not be in the position to work as full-time artists.
Educational Programming
Since 2005 Leverage has served over 17,500 students, in partnership with Springboard to Learning through arts integrated programs teaching math, science and literacy with dance in, primarily, low income public schools.
In 2017, the company expanded its educational offerings to include training classroom teachers to integrate the arts into preschool curriculum through the Kennedy Center endorsed Wolf Trap method.
Our History
Leverage Dance Theater began as the performing duo of dancers/choreographers Angela Culbertson and Terry Pexton and originally incorporated as Atrek Educational Corporation in 1992. Following the tenure of founding Artistic Director Angela Culbertson, the company operated as the Atrek Dance Collective from 2003 until 2012 under the Direction of Diana Barrios and focused on programming to support the growth of the local professional dance industry.
Marking the end of the second chapter in the company’s twenty year history, the company restructured and rebranded to become Leverage Dance Theater in 2012. Whereas Atrek Dance Collective was more focused on developing local dancers and choreographers, Leverage shifted its focus to support more accessibility to dance and the development of local dance audiences. Diana Barrios became the company’s Artistic Director and the company shifted to more community forward programming with an emphasis on innovative site-specific work and a more singular artistic aesthetic. The support of local talent remains integral to the success of the company but it is now more appropriately structured to meet the needs of community development.