As a dance maker, Rachel has created work for women’s prisons, public schools, outside spaces, multi-media performance spaces, and traditional theaters. She enjoys dabbling in interdisciplinary dance that fuses contemporary modern dance, theater, and film.  Rachel’s movement development explores task-oriented exploration and pedestrian portrayals with full-bodied, lush virtuosity accompanied by clear, intriguing gestures. 

Rachel’s choreographic work has been presented nationally and internationally, most notably being commissioned by Bare Bait Dance Company, Centennial State Ballet, and West Virginia Dance Company, and sponsored by the Atlas Black Box Experimental Studio in Boulder, CO.  Her choreography has been selected for performance in the Gala Performance at the National High School Dance Festival, at WestFest Dance in New York and Performática in México, and presented at the American College Dance Association Conferences (in 2006 and 2014), WV Wesleyan University, West Virginia Dance Festival, the Philly Live Arts & Fringe (PA), Dixon Place (NY) and Triskelion Arts (NY). Rachel’s past musical theatre choreography credits include Annie, Jr., Into the Woods, and the Little Mermaid.

Rachel has been an artist-in-residence with Open AIR, based in Western Montana, collaborating with Joy French, artistic director of Bare Bait Dance, and created work with Samantha Lysaght and Julie Rooney in New York, as lonely collective. Learn more about lonely collective here.

Rachel Oliver Young has performed professionally with

  • Avodah Dance (New York),

  • Ballet Afsaneh (San Francisco),

  • Carli Mareneck (West Virginia)

  • Dance Theatre/Shannon (San Francisco)

  • Double Vision (San Francisco),

  • ecnDanceworks (Chicago, now The Moving Architects in NY)

  • Gesel Mason (New York)

  • Presidio Dance Theatre (San Francisco)

  • Shandoah Goldman/Carte Blanche Performance (New York)

  • Shaun Irons & Lauren Petty (New York)

  • Tough Cookie (Brooklyn)

  • You & Me Performance Project (Denver)

  • and the West Virginia Dance Company, touring the Mid-Atlantic Region for three years under the direction of Toneta Akers-Toler and Donald Laney, performing work by Gerri Houlihan, Carli Mareneck, Donald Laney, and others.   

Rachel’s research was presented at the 2013 Special Topics Conference through Congress on Research and Dance, the 2023 National Dance Education Organization Conference, Teaching is Leading: Embracing our Impact & Opportunity as Dance Educators, and she has previously served on the Colorado Dance Education Organization (CoDeo) Board, and is currently serving on the board for Presenting Denver.