Rebecca Allen | artist
Photo by Hunter Armistead Photography courtesy Nashville Arts Magazine
Rebecca (Becky) Allen is a multidisciplinary artist based in her hometown of New Orleans. As a dancer, choreographer, and ceramic artist, her work explores the body in relation to materials, landscape and the natural environment. She approaches performance as a practice of presence, deep listening, and embodied connection.
She has premiered choreographic works in collaboration with institutions such as New Dialect (a founding member), Intersection New Music Ensemble, the Marigny Opera Ballet, Tulane University Dance Department, the Louisiana School of Math Science and Art, and Northwestern State University of Louisiana. Her solo performance Siddhartha (2023) was presented at the International Dance Festival of New Orleans. In 2022, she debuted her first solo art show at Staple Goods, featuring Landing, a sculptural installation that explores the concept of the absent body.
Most recently, she presented The Water that Holds in collaboration with video artist Cristina Molina at Basin Arts as part of their ProjectSpace Residency (2025). Her work with Molina is also currently on display at Other Plans gallery in New Orleans (2025) and was featured last fall at The Ogden Museum of Southern Art (2024). In addition to this ongoing collaboration, her work as a movement artist has been exhibited at the Parlour Gallery in New Orleans through projects with visual artists such as Ryn Wilson and Sara Madandar.
With over two decades of experience as a dance educator, Becky has taught at institutions such as Vanderbilt University, New Dialect, and Tulane University, as well as various dance and performing arts studios in Nashville and New Orleans. She served as an assistant professor of dance at Northwestern State University of Louisiana (2022-2023) and is currently an adjunct professor of dance at Tulane University.
Becky earned her MFA in Interdisciplinary Dance Performance from Tulane University in 2021. She currently maintains RA|Studio where she creates her own line of functional pottery.
Becky is originally from New Orleans, Louisiana where she began her dance training with the Jefferson Ballet Theatre. She studied both dance and the visual arts at Loyola University and the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts. In 2001, she received her B.A. in Cultural Studies from the University of New Orleans. That same year, she moved to Nashville where she has worked as an artist and educator for the past 16 years with organizations such as the Nashville Ballet, Vanderbilt University, and Metro Parks Dance Division. In 2004 she became the assistant director to modern dance company StillPoint Dance Theatre and performed with the company for 7 years. She has been collaborating as a dancer and instructor with Banning Bouldin and New Dialect since the collective's inception in 2012, and more recently as a rehearsal assistant and choreographer. Her most recent works include Kat 5, a commission by Intersection New Music Ensemble in collaboration with New Dialect, which premiered in Nashville in 2016, and Lighthouse, a collaboration with Intermission and New Dialect, which premiered at Monthaven Mansion in Hendersonville, Tennessee in 2017. She maintains a studio (RA | Studio) where she designs and creates her own line of functional ceramics. In her work as a multi-disciplinary artist, Becky loves to explore the intersection of her experience with the visual arts and dance.
Photo by Hunter Armistead courtesy Nashville Arts Magazine
“As a dance artist, I see myself as a moving poet and architect of the space around my body. As a visual artist, the same is true, except that where dance is ephemeral, with clay or pencil, I am left with a tangible object or record of my movement map. ”