Degenerate Art Ensemble makes multi-dimensional storytelling experiences with an aesthetic inspired by punk, comics, cinema, nightmares and fairytales driven by live music and their own style of physical theater and butoh inspired dance. They combine projected imagery with the movement and sound to create new mythologies, revealing other dimensions, challenging reality in a multi-dimensional storytelling experience.

above photos by Jim Coleman and Bruce Clayton Tom

Degenerate Art Ensemble

has shown their work throughout the US and Europe known for their large scale dance and theater projects, concerts, site-transforming spectacles and ongoing public experimentation. Recent highlights of the group's work include a major exhibition at the Frye Art Museum in 2011, was commissioned by director Robert Wilson to interpret his work Einstein on the Beach in 2012 and collaborated with the Kronos Quartet in 2013. Also in 2012 Degenerate Art Ensemble was commissioned by the city of Seattle to create a massive site specific work Underbelly in collaboration with Olson Kundig Architects to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Seattle World’s Fair. The group’s 2015 work Predator Songstress premiered at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco in 2015. In of 2016 DAE teamed up with Czech rock legends Uz Jsme Doma for an epic orchestral work inspired by the group's music at the Archa Theatre in Prague with the South Bohemian Philharmonic Orchestra. DAE’s newest work Skeleton Flower was first seen as a work in progress at the Spotlight USA Festival in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, had its world premiere in Seattle in 2019, was performed at the International Festival of Contemporary Dance in Mexico City in August of 2021, was performed in Odense, Denmark at the HC Anderson festival in 2022 and will be performed in San Francisco and beyond in 2024. The group premiered their collaboration with sculptor Senga Nengudi and musician Eddy Kwon; Boy mother / faceless bloom at Colorado College and at the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center in 2022, had its New York premiere at New York Live Arts in 2023 and will be shown at a soon to be announced Seattle venue in December of 2024.