ASHLEY MCQUEEN
With an emphasis on athleticism and humanism, McQueen approaches all aspects of her work with an artistic openness, clarity iN communication, and joyful passion.
Ashley McQueen, Founder/Artistic Director of Smashworks Dance, is a New York City-based performer, choreographer, and teaching artist. She holds an MFA in Dance from Hollins University with a BFA in Dance from Webster University. In addition to directing and choreographing for Smashworks Dance, she performs as a Company Dancer/Artistic Associate for Amanda Selwyn Dance Theatre, is Studio Manager for Amanda Selwyn Dance Studio, and serves as a Lead Teacher for Pure Barre Tribeca. McQueen has significant experience as an educator including serving as an Adjunct Professor of Dance at Manhattanville College, a guest artist for Webster University and Hamilton College, and a dance instructor for the Peridance School and the Martha Graham School. Hailed as “a dancer with the grace of a ballerina, the groundedness of an Isadora acolyte, and the impetuous musicality of someone who dances because she must” (Oberon’s Grove), McQueen has worked with choreographers such as Shawn T. Bible, Maurya Kerr, Christine Knoblauch-O'Neal, Jennifer Medina, Jennifer Huffman-Olivas, Omar Olivas, Louisa Pancoast, James Robey, Uri Sands, Amanda Selwyn, Michael Uthoff, and Paris Wilcox. McQueen has performed as a company member with Amanda Selwyn Dance Theatre, ShawnBibleDanceCo, Common Thread Contemporary Dance Company, and Arova Contemporary Ballet. ​​​
​​​​Her choreography has been commissioned by Peridance Youth Ensemble, Minnesota Ballet, Big Muddy Dance Company (now St. Louis Dance Theatre), Arova Contemporary Ballet, Alabama Dance Theatre, and Southern Danceworks; and presented at festivals including Dance St. Louis Spring to Dance, Midwest RADFest, NYC Transit Museum, Westfest Dance Festival, and American College Dance Festival. She was twice invited by ANNONYArts to independently choreograph and direct two evening length concerts and was named a Kranzberg Exhibition Series Guest Artist, where she choreographed Laune, a site-specific dance performance on rideable lawn mowers for Laumeier Sculpture Park. The work culminated in a film installation, Harmony in 3, by Zlatko Cosic that remained on exhibition. For six years, she and co-collaborator Thom Dancy have choreographed for Lake Arts Project (Milwaukee and Duluth), including War Words Dance–in partnership with Feast of Crispian and Bright Hill Press (with generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts).
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“Smashworks. . .what a perfect name for these powerful sisters.
McQueen’s company is tightly precise and fearless” - Front Row Center
Smashworks Dance is a 501(c)(3) New York-based dance company advocating for women’s empowerment through live performance, education outreach, and community partnerships. Founded and directed by choreographer Ashley McQueen, Smashworks performs throughout New York City and has toured to San Antonio, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Kalamazoo, and St. Louis. Community outreach includes confidence-building dance workshops, with partners such as the Girl Scouts of Greater New York & Troop 6000 (a Girl Scouts program that supports girls experiencing homelessness in the NYC area) and Yap About It (a nonprofit dedicated to providing accessible arts and talk therapy for young people). Smashworks Dance was named a Village Voice “Voice Choice" for their performance of City Stories at the Center for Performance Research in 2016, and their 2018 evening length political satire For Which It Stands was featured in Time Out New York and Brokelyn’s “Top 20 Cheap Things To Do.” In 2018, Smashworks was invited as a local community group to hear Michelle Obama speak on her Becoming tour at the Barclays Center. They were also awarded the Theaterlab Hotel New Work residency in collaboration with Hope Salas and Justin Cimino, exploring the fusion of dance and clown. Off the stage, Smashworks partnered with Rebel Girls Productions to design movement activities for their most recent chapter book Alicia Alonso Takes The Stage published worldwide August 2020. Smashworks also presented two original dance films for Dance The Vote St Louis, in collaboration with the Missouri History Museum, in an effort to promote voter turnout and registration. Additional commissions include original dance films for the London Climate Change Festival, and Girls Inc. of New York City’s Virtual Gala. In 2022, Smashworks collaborated with Swedish visual artist Benny Cruz to create a multidisciplinary performance experience incorporating his subway map artwork. In addition to an evening length performance at CPR-Center for Performance Research, Smashworks performed at Benny Cruz’s art gallery opening reception at Box Factory Gallery and staged a public installation at Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, NY.
In 2025, Smashworks produced Austringer, a new work by Artists-in-Residence Louisa Pancoast and roboticist Dr. Nialah Wilson-Small exploring human-drone contact and live-feed projection, performed at the International Conference on Robotics & Automation (Atlanta, GA) and the ELM Foundation’s The Boiler (Brooklyn, New York). Most recently, Smashworks has partnered with French theatre group L'equipe de Realisation to develop 404 Inside, a new multidisciplinary piece awarded a two week residency at Le Pari in Tarbes, France with an 8-show tour throughout the Hautes-Pyrenees region in Fall 2025.
