Ellen Smith Ahern is a dance artist and community organizer/MSW living with her family on Abenaki lands in N’Dakinna/New Hampshire. As a 2023 Creative Community Fellow with National Art Strategies and 2024 Artist in Residence with the National Park Service, her dances explore the intersection of movement, storytelling and nature, creating interdisciplinary performance projects that aim to include a wider array of people than might otherwise feel welcomed into traditional dance spaces.

Ellen has performed and taught throughout the US and internationally in deep collaboration with Jane Comfort & Company, Lida Winfield, Kate Elias, Rachel Bernsen, Hannah Dennison, Pauline Jennings, Polly Motley, El Circo Contemporaneo, Amy Chavasse, Rebecca Pappas, David Appel and Tiffany Rhynard’s Big APE. she’s thankful for teachers and mentors, including, peter schmitz, amy chavasse, jane comfort, jenn ponder, penny campbell & andrea olsen. With generous support from many institutions and individuals, including VT and NH State Arts Councils, New England Foundation for the Arts, Ucross Foundation, Dance Films Association, 4Culture, The Field, The Flynn, and the National Endowment for the Arts, Ellen shares her work through film, installation and live performance in many diverse venues, such as the National Gallery of Art, Dance on Camera Festival/Film at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Mellon Qatar, Bates Dance Festival, AVA Gallery, capital city grange, concord sound + color festival, Dixon Place, Triskelion Arts, Middlebury College, Artistree Community Arts Center, Middlefield Community Center, FlynnSpace, Ionion Center of Kefalonia, Rococo Theatre in Prague and vulture festival at the athens-clarke county landfill.

connect at ellensmithahern@gmail.com