ASHLEY SELMER

Ashley Selmer (Founder and Creative Director of SHAPESHIFT)

Ashley is trained in Jazz, contemporary, ballet, hip-hop and African. Ashley’s credits include SHAPESHIFT productions: Grey Skies Blue, Superhero, XI:XI, and XI:XI: The Awakening, and SHAPESHIFT’s self-titled work; Choreographer hip-hop musical Last Stop On Market Street (Children’s Theatre Company); Associate Choreographer In The Heights, Jesus Christ Superstar (Ordway Center for Performing Arts); Ensemble West Side Story, 2nd Assistant Director Irving Berlin’s White Christmas (Ordway); Cast role as Swing  Lady Maria, the Queen, and Queen Bee in the Queen’s Ball Bridgerton Experience (Shondaland/Netflix/Fever), and  Ensemble The Amen Corner (Guthrie/Penumbra Theater). Ashley also performed in Direct TV’s Now Promotion for Jennifer Lopez’s Super Bowl LII Concert.

In studio, Ashley draws from life’s real and imaginary experiences to craft stories that emote feelings and reflect diversity & inclusion. She emphasizes technique while utilizing each dancer’s unique and beautiful movements as tools for telling and moving interwoven narratives. Ashley encourages SHAPESHIFT dancers to openly share their personal experiences, and together they design choreography that captures common elements that make us the same, in so many ways, despite our socioeconomic or racial differences. Ashley is a Rom-com collector, lover of overpriced lattes and vintage furniture. She is annoyingly organized (as her friends and family tell us). Ashley earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts (emphasis in choreography and performance) from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.