Stephanie Zaletel (she/they) is a choreographer, dance artist, movement facilitator, dream-tender, environmentalist, plant-based eater and cook, and mental health advocate currently based on the West Coast of the US. 

Zaletel’s twenties were threaded together with persistent and prolific art making practices inspired by her quest to access and create dance in trauma-informed, consciously-feminist led spaces – and in 2015 she founded szalt, a dance company to further this mission.  

Through szalt Zaletel integrated choreography, music/sound design, textile/fiber arts, film, poetry, neighborhood inclusion, and astronomy into her highly collaborative performance-based offerings. Within 5 years, szalt’s performances, classes, and workshops traveled through 8 states, reached thousands of audience members and movers, and connected her with lifelong friends, colleagues, collaborators, and partnerships.  

In addition to her work with szalt, Zaletel has created works for musical artists, films, dance, opera, and theater companies nationally and internationally including collaborations with clipping., C. Prinz, Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Company, Beth Morrison Projects, and Lars Jan’s Early Morning Opera.  

She also enjoys dancing and performing in the works of others and has most recently danced in projects for Rosanna Gamson | World Wide and Lindsey Lollie. 

Zaletel is a guest artist at California Institute of the Arts and Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University in 2022 and an Artist in Residency at Loghaven in Tennessee this Spring. 

In 2021 Zaletel completed the Certificate in Somatic Psychotherapy and Practices Program at Antioch University to deepen her understanding of how trauma lives in and moves out of the body and how this relates to her work in the Dance field (and beyond) moving forward.