Wade Schaaf is an award-winning contemporary ballet choreographer and founding artistic director based in Chicago. In 2012, Wade founded Chicago Repertory Ballet, and has been creating daring abstract and narrative contemporary ballet works since the company’s inception.Wade’s choreography is known for its hallmark style, which blends contemporary dance with classical ballet aesthetics — a reflection of their performing career, which included State Street Ballet, Ohio Ballet, River North Chicago Dance Company, and Thodos Dance Chicago. About Wade’s choreography, Lauren Warnecke of the Chicago Tribune wrote that Schaaf’s lineage as both a classical and contemporary dancer is fully realized in the vocabulary of one recent ballet, calling it possibly the best such example in recent memory.
For Wade, dance is a natural expression of their humanity and the full breadth of their individuality as a person and an artist. Curious about themselves, their experiences, and the world around them, Wade brings that exploration into their work. While form, content, idea, structure, and medium all matter in the creation of their art, it is the expression of self —intended or subtextual — that remains ever-present.
Wade resists easy categorization. “Contemporary ballet choreographer” comes close to describing their work, but even that label can feel constricting — a tension Wade connects to their point of view as a non-binary artist. Seeing labels as inherently limiting, Wade brings a queer perspective to a gendered art form full of rules and boundaries, at times working within that framework and at times dismantling the antiquated notions that don’t serve them as an artist. Wade holds a deep love for ballet alongside a belief that the form can offer the world a new point of view — one that centers a wider breadth of people than ballet has traditionally allowed.
Wade grew up in Elgin, Illinois, and trained at Northern Illinois University. A voracious appreciator of the arts, including opera and symphony, Wade spends their spare time in nature, traveling, and pursuing other artistic pursuits, including painting.
