Meet Elyse Kassa

Elyse Kassa lives in Columbus, Ohio, and loves to make things. She is primarily a dancer and choreographer, but also a writer, visual artist, actor, and educator. She is a New England native and has traveled to Nashville, Hartford, New York City, and Berlin, to continue researching, learning, and developing her understanding of movement and dance-making. Her solo and collaborative dance works have been selected for performance at Blockfort Gallery, Synergy Dance Series, Columbus City Dance Showcase, Cleveland Dance Festival, and the East-Central ACDA Gala Concert. Her process incorporates improvisation, contemporary dance technique, text, comedy, and prop, exploring how physical spaces and boundaries– both tangible and intangible– mitigate our interactions with ourselves and one another.

In 2024, Elyse founded all our friends collective, which aims to connect artists of multiple disciplines interested in movement, performance, theater, and collaboration. In addition to her creative pursuits, Elyse deepens her connection to the Columbus dance community through her involvement with the Columbus Dance Alliance, where she holds a leadership role. She is a volunteer administrator for Columbus Community Dance Class and member of the Teaching Staff at Flux Flow Dance Center. Elyse holds a B.F.A. in Dance: Performance & Choreography from Ohio University. 

​

All Our Friends Collective

all our friends collective is a movement-forward group of multidisciplinary creatives. all our friends recognize that dance-makers are also photographers, writers, arts administrators, educators, musicians, service industry professionals, grantwriters, painters, and all of these roles inform how and what we create. all our friends work collaboratively with one another, with instances of ourselves, and with the world around us. all our friends are kind, curious, sarcastic, rowdy, “rigorously funny and accessibly abstract”.

all our friends collective was established in 2023 by Elyse Kassa, and currently includes Emily Kilroy, Laura Patterson, and Lindsey Schleich. All four are based in Columbus, Ohio. all our friends premiered their first work, “It’s giving [blank]”, in 2023 for the annual Columbus City Dance Showcase. They continue to host events and classes in their local community.