Iveta Asone

1959
Choreographer, folk dance group leader, active public worker

Iveta Asone was born on 13 January 1959 in the USA.

Asone is a choreographer, folk and art dance officer of the World Federation of Free Latvians (WFLA) in the USA.

She grew up in Indianapolis. Her mother Guna and father Ernests danced in the founding group of the Indianapolis folk dance group “Jautrais pāris” (The Merry Couple) in 1950. She started dancing in “Jautrais pāris” in 1968 and has been the director of the group since 1988. She has taught folk dancing in the USA at summer high schools in Garezers, Beverina and Kursa.

She was the folk-dance leader at the 8th, 10th and 12th Latvian Song Festivals in the USA: in 1988 in Indianapolis; in 1997 in Cleveland and in 2007 in Indianapolis. She was a director of the folk-dance programme at the 12th Garezers Song Days in 1999.

She has received artist grants for Latvian folk dance and folk music creative projects from the Indiana Arts Commission and the Arts Council of Indianapolis. In 1994, together with the artistic directors of the Indianapolis Dance Company, she received an ArtsLink Collaborative Grant for a collaborative project with the Latvian State Dance Ensemble “Daile”. Asone taught at the International School of Latvia from 1994–1996; during this time, she collaborated with Riga folk dance ensemble “Gatve”.

She participated in the Song and Dance Festival in Riga in 1990, 1993, 1998, 2013 and 2018 in the dance group “Jautrais pāris”.

Asone is a member of the Estonian and Latvian folk music ensemble “Ezisi” in Indianapolis. In collaboration with “Ezisi” she has staged several Estonian folk dances performed by “Jautrais pāris”.

Since 2019 she has been involved in the North American Latvian New Dance Repository project, collecting descriptions, audio and video recordings of dances choreographed in North America since 1950.