Shoshi grew up in a family of performers. Her parents Eric and Ines Zeller Bass are world class puppeteers and the founders of the Sandglass theater in Putney, VT. With them Shoshi traveled all over the globe: Europe, South America, Asia…. while attending a Montessori school that encouraged her to record her observations of culture in touring journals.

  The New England Youth Theater was a major touchstone for Shoshi in those years as she returned home between tours. She was in the first version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and was in You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown twice, first as Linus then as Lucy. She was in Much Ado About Nothing and the Crucible and finally played Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra in her senior year.
 Shoshi is known best to most of us as an accomplished dancer. She studied at the Brattleboro School of Dance and with Shannon McGoff through the BUHS career center program. In 2006 she traveled to Senegal to study African dance and in 2007 to New York to study classical Indian dance. She often contributes dance, musical and comedy routines to NEYT cabarets.

 Stephen Stearns, as artistic director at NEYT, recognized her potential early as a dance teacher and choreographer and gave her the chance to choreograph the Music Man in 2004, a show that was a tremendous success. At NEYT she also choreographed Oliver, The Best of Broadway summer shows in 2006 and 2007, Guys and Dolls in 2007 and West Side Story in 2008 as well as helping Peter Gould in directing The Jungle Book. Shoshi says she enjoys working with untrained dancers and the challenge of adjusting her teaching to different learning styles. While at work with students, Shoshi is very calm, clear and precise, but also sympathetic, and attentive in a style that exudes enthusiasm and joy in the work. Students pay attention and enjoy working with her so she always gets the best from them.

  Shoshi spent a year at Mills, a college in Oakland California where she developed her interest in anthropology as well as continuing to dance. Mills turned out to be a poor fit for her interests so she came back to Brattleboro where she entered and completed the Pro track training program with the New England Center for Circus Arts. She further developed bodily strength and awareness by her study of Aerials: flying trapeze, fabric and acrobatics. She developed a partner act based on Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid as well as a solo act during that year with the circus center.

  Dance, theater, music, circus and cultural studies – The question for Shoshi has been how to bring it all together? Movement ethnography is the term she has coined to intergrate this diversity of skill and interest in a cross cultural process of exploration and The Naropa Institute in Boulder Colorado is the place she has chosen to help her in the development of this idea. At Naropa life and art are one, coupled with spiritual and bodily awareness. This is where Shoshi is studying now beginning this year, 2008. No doubt we all hope she finds a way to come home to choreograph another show at NEYT and to share with us all the wisdom and skill she has absorbed in her studies at Naropa.

To reach Shoshi's staff page click here.