About Us

Space Station Dance Residency started in the Summer of 2020 by Jacob Henss, Robbie & Scott Van Nest, and Sports Medicine & Training Center when the world needed art and community in the heart of the pandemic. During this time, artists were unsure of their creative futures, and we saw a need in the St. Louis area to create an outlet showcasing experimental concert dance. From here, the residency has become an annual event in the St. Louis dance community, happening the first weekend of August. Each year, the residency encompasses dancers and audience members from multiple backgrounds, bringing everyone together to share space and ideas and to invigorate each other.

The initial intent of the dance residency was to produce experimental dance choreography that probes investigative content. Alongside this, we turn unconventional spaces, like a gym or a church, into performative sites of creation and wonder. This informed the production side of our residency to include non-traditional production elements, like DIY or guerrilla lighting, original costumes, original soundscores, and many other make-it-work elements. This is an essential factor to our residency to promote to other artists that you don’t need traditional production elements associated with dance to produce a substantial choreographic work. In an industry lacking funding, you can produce dance on austere budgets yet still be refined.

We hire all kinds of dancers and pay them an hourly wage for their professional work with the intent to mingle with many different individuals of varying backgrounds. We look at diversity in training, race, gender, sexuality, age, and current dance career placement to purposefully culminate artists of many backgrounds. This diverse melting pot of people shares space in ways they may not have been able to in their day-to-day lives. We hope this message of artistic and individual inclusivity transcends to our audience members and the St. Louis dance community to cultivate the future of dance we want to see in a city with a tumultuous history of segregation and violence.

Our Mission

Space Station Dance Residency is a movement incubator for St. Louis-based creatives. Our residency began in the summer of 2020 and continues to create a safe and welcoming space using dance, movement, and choreography to investigate the human experience. We promote professionals, students, emerging artists, and our audiences to mingle and connect through our tangible and transcendental spaces by encouraging experimentation and conversation stimulated by choreography.

Within this, we welcome trial and error and the adventure of the performance space becoming a laboratory that supports this experimental process. Our integrity for choreography is matched with our strong beliefs in shifting the paradigm of concert dance to a valid career choice rather than a hobby. By paying and treating dancers as professionals, we support this shift more broadly within the St. Louis dance community. We also emphasize dancer wellness with supportive medical, fitness, and educational programs from our sponsors, Sports Medicine & Training Center. We value inclusivity and diversity among many personal identifiers ranging from race and gender to technical background and content. We infuse everything we do with a sense of wonder, imagination, and playfulness.

Our Team

Jacob Henss

CO-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Artistic Director

Jacob Henss (he/him) is a dancer, producer, choreographer, and teacher primarily based in the Midwest. He has been an adjunct faculty member at Millikin University since 2020, where he was awarded outstanding adjunct faculty in 2023. Henss also is a Lecturer for the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign (UIUC) since 2022. He holds an MFA in Dance from UIUC (2019-22), where he was awarded the Vannie L. Sherry Memorial Award for best graduate performer in 2021 & 2022. He is also a graduate of Webster University (2013–17) with a BA in Dance and Music, where he was awarded dance honors and the emerging choreographer award.

Henss has performed with the Modern American Dance Company (MADCO), located in St. Louis, MO, where he was a MADCO2 founding member (2017–18) and later an apprentice for the leading company (2018–19). Post-graduation work includes becoming the producer and Artistic Director for Space Station Dance Residency, an organization dedicated to presenting experimental dance work in the greater St. Louis area.

Henss has been fortunate to dance for such choreographers in his career such as Sara Hook, Tere O’Connor, Jennifer Monson, Roxane D’Orleans Juste, Ashley McQueen, Rebecca Nettl-Fiol, Omri Drumlevich (resetting a work by Ohad Naharin), Nejla Yatkins, Micheal Uthoff, Rachel Rizzuto, Kayt MacMasters, and now Jennifer Allen and Deke Weaver. Henss has also been in residency with St. Louis presenters such as Sports Medicine & Training Center, Webster University, MADCO2, Karlovsky and Company, Materializing and Activating Social Habitus (MARSH), and CommUnity Arts Festival.

Robbie Van Nest

CO-Executive Director

Roberta (Robbie) Van Nest was born and raised in St. Louis, and lives in Crestwood with her husband Scott, two cats and a poodle. Her first career was as a research biologist in the areas of cell biology and developmental genetics. She earned her doctorate and was then employed at Washington University as a research associate until 2002, when she and Scott co-founded the Sports Medicine & Training Center, an outpatient physical therapy and fitness center. Robbie continues as the business manager for SMTC but has semi-retired from day to day operations so that she can pursue other interests, especially Space Station Dance!. Robbie is active at Hope United Church of Christ which is the performance home of Space Station. In addition to acting as liaison between Hope and Space Station, she serves on Hope’s council and participates in a number of its ministries including Outreach and Justice and handbell choir. Robbie also serves on the Board of Directors for Isaiah 58 Ministries, a south St. Louis-based non-profit organization that aids families in need with a food pantry and other supportive services. Robbie and Scott have two adult daughters, Paige and Morgan, who are active in the dance community. In their free time Robbie and Scott enjoy family gatherings, nature, antiquing and travel. Robbie is also a fiber fanatic and loves to knit, crochet, weave, sew, and spin.

Ramona Orion

Assistant Director

Ramona Orion is a multidisciplinary artist based in St. Louis. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Dance from Webster University, where she also pursued studies in psychology and Expressive Art Therapy. This fall, she enters her second season with Karlovsky & Company Dance, having just returned from her first international tour with the company in Slovakia. She also holds a 200-hour yoga teacher certification, further enriching her holistic and body-centered approach to healing and creative expression. Since 2022, she has been involved with Space Station as a choreographer, performer, and producer, and is excited to begin her new role as Assistant Director!