PIETER INCUBATOR SERIES
The Pieter Incubator Series shares stories from people who have been rooted in and nourished by Pieter’s community over the years.
July 2026: Stacy Dawson Stearns
Stacy Dawson Stearns (she/they) is a performer, educator, and curator. Stacy’s involvement in the Pieter community spans nearly two decades; her teaching, curation, and performance work set precedents for many programs that continue in the space to this day. Stacy’s stories vividly illustrate how Pieter has evolved over time, even as it stays true to its core values.
Could you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
“I am an interdisciplinary artist based in dance, performance, and theater, but I work across disciplines always, always hyphenated and slashed. I've also always been an arts facilitator as well as an artist.
Pieter has been a really important part of my life and practice in LA. I think that my relationship with Pieter as a community has absolutely changed my life, and shaped my life as it is even today. Everywhere I look, every time I put my hand out, every time I see a show or read something or participate in the arts community in LA and beyond, there's Pieter people there. I'm really in a space of gratitude for that.”
“There's so much to say about Pieter's influence, but I want to mention specifically one practice that was a part of all the Pieter classes, because of Jmy. I believe she said it's inspired by a Quaker meeting practice. At the start of every class, folks would gather in a circle and answer four questions: What do you want to be called? What pronouns do you use? What's one thing you need? What's one thing you have to offer? This practice of listening to what people need, and asking yourself if you can offer something – I mean, that prompt alone does so much to help ground people in a space, to help them start building relationships.”
How has Pieter helped incubate your work as an artist?
“I've definitely been incubated by Pieter, and I've helped incubate many relationships and projects there. I've talked a lot about the alternative economy that developed there. But also, as I kept going to Pieter, Milka [Djordjevich, an LA-based dancer and choreographer] asked me to teach some sessions for the Monday Morning Class series that existed at the time. It was like: I've just been coming here to see things, to participate, and now I can lead a class here. And then, I can create my own class. I can definitely say, I still use some of the classes I taught during MMC in my work as a professor.
After doing that for a while, I was invited to do programming for the MMC series. I learned that, the more responsibility I took on, I also had the chance to give other people opportunities. Like Milka did with me, I invited so many folks to teach class. They'd often say: well, I don't know what I would teach. I'd be like, perfect! What do you want to teach? Just make it up! People wound up creating the coolest classes. It was exciting to see how hungry people were for classes that were complex, sophisticated, or just plain experimental. I feel I've seen so many other dance spaces in LA expand the ranges and types of classes they offer in the years since then.”
Why do you think it's important to support Pieter, especially during the Emergency Fundraiser?
“We're losing so many legacy spaces in LA, for so many reasons. But Pieter has a deep, rich history that so many people are a part of – whether they were more active at the Lincoln Heights location, or in the Broadway space. The more we can contribute to Pieter's current life, the more we can work on keeping it alive now, the more we can knit together its past, and present, and then work on the future together. It's an amazing heart / mind / intellect / consciousness space that we don't even all understand.”
If you could come up with three words to describe Pieter, what would they be?
“Pieter is radical, conscious, and necessary.”
How have you participated in the Pieter community over the years?
“There may be a lot of Pieter community members who don't know who I am! I love the current space and have participated in things there, but I'm more familiar with Pieter's life pre-Broadway. I think I started going to Pieter around 2008...! I remember hearing about it when my daughter was a toddler; one day at her preschool I met a really cool woman. She told me about this amazing place she went to see a show, where all you had to do to get in was bring some food or drink or a book or clothing to donate. I heard this and thought, these are my people. Even though I haven't been there, I know these are my people.
It was also great to hear about a space where two moms could bring their kids and still be surrounded by artists. When you start building a family, your life changes, and you spend a lot of time going to places where kids go. So imagine hearing about a space where my lesbian friend and her child were welcome, and the child covered his admission by donating a diaper, and there was free food for people to eat, and there was an amazing show!
Going to Pieter reminded me of my time in New York, when I went to the Pyramid Club in the East Village for Black Lips [Performance Cult] drag shows. Once I started performing with Black Lips, I thought: this is where I go now. This is where I belong. Until I went to Pieter, I hadn't had another experience like that. I moved to LA in 2003, and up to that point I hadn't found a really weirdo art community. I felt like I was trying to make myself fit some odd idea of what a professional artist should be. But Pieter made me feel like I didn't have to hide.
I think a lot of people who came to Pieter were undoing things we learned as dancers or actors – unlearning the feeling that there's only one way to do things, or that we were always doing something wrong, always breaking a rule, never being good enough. Entering Pieter felt like walking into someone's home: there was a kitchen that everyone could use. You could water the plants that lived there. The space has built and nurtured communities of people who wanted to work together. So many friendships started in that space. That all felt revolutionary to me.
Of course, Jmy [James Kidd, Pieter's founder] has so much to do with so much of all of these things. When I go out in the world now, I can trace a lot of lineage back to Pieter, and these alternate ways of being in creative community that I experienced there. So many art and performance spaces in LA were started or run by people who were involved in Pieter from the beginning.”
👉🏽 Watch the interview on Instagram!