Heather Shaw

With diverse experience as a filmmaker, choreographer, performer, and curator, Heather Shaw’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The World National Radio Show, IPA Press Arts, Bold Magazine, thINKing Dance, and more.

Heather is the co-director of the activist screendance documentary, Telephone, with Krishna Washburn. The first of its kind, Telephone celebrates the art form of audio description for dance, allowing blind and visually impaired people to be included fully in the joy of artistic expression. The film has screened across the country, including at Lincoln Center, Mill Valley Film Festival, San Francisco Dance Film Festival, New Museum Los Gatos, and Pacific Northwest Ballet. Telephone received support from New York State Council on the Arts, Puffin Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Town of Los Gatos, NYU Center for Disability Studies, and more. Through her work with Telephone​, Heather has guest lectured at NYU, Berklee College of Music, Carnegie Mellon, Carleton College, and Rutgers.

Heather’s choreography has been featured at YAGP, California Dance Classics, ONYX Dance Co, SpARC Dance Festival, Dance Mission SF, and more. In 2020, she was selected as one of five Project Tier choreographers from across the country for Regional Dance America’s NCI. She is currently the Artistic Director of Montage Contemporary Company and teaches ballet and contemporary at Montage Dance Studio and TDC of Los Gatos. She previously taught barre and fitness at Equinox, Pure Barre, and on the FOX Studios lot.

As a dancer, Heather performed professionally with MKM Bollystars and Daurden Contemporary Dance Theater in Los Angeles, and currently with ArcTangent Dance in San Jose, CA. In 2016, she participated in the Vertigo International Dance Program.

Heather received her early dance training at Santa Cruz Ballet Theater and TDC of the Bay Area. She is a graduate of the two-year acting program at The Meisner Technique Studio in San Francisco and holds a BA in Philosophy (with a Theater/Dance minor) from UC Berkeley.

As a curator, Heather has served as Performing Arts Manager at the Oshman Family JCC and Co-Curator of TEDxPaloAlto. Her artistic interests include exploring the intersection of movement, sentience, perception, cultural behavior, and aesthetics. She is the founder of Moonshot Creative Studios, LLC (www.moonshotcreativestudios.com) and is currently working on her new documentary, The Kid in Blue (www.KidInBlueFilm.com).