Orchestrating Dreams

Ashley Byler is a dance maker, performer and performing arts teacher. She has an MFA in Dance from Sarah Lawrence College and a BA in Music and Psychology from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, where she majored in vocal performance, cello secondary. She hails from Alabama where she performed professionally in regional musical theatre and ballet companies as a teenager. From there she studied vocal performance at Indiana University Bloomington, then performed and studied in New York City. After her undergraduate work and early adventures in New York she moved to Ketchikan, Alaska where she has since taught two generations of young dancers and musicians in Ketchikan. Traveling back and forth between New York and Alaska, she has taught musical theatre, dance and early childhood music in both communities for nearly two decades. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence College and for public schools in New York City, Huntsville and Ketchikan as a guest artist. She has made and continues to make performance work - both her own and with Sara Rudner, Jackson Polys, LoVid, and The New Red Order. She’s performed at The Whitney Museum, Dancespace Project, La Mama, MASS MoCA, and the Judson Church. Her work as a performer and mother strongly influences her teaching practice as she explores and develops techniques for experiencing and expressing musical ideas with the whole self.