Lisa Broere and the Birth of Commune Dance Company
By Jess Luoma
If I could slow down time and savor every frame — every expression, every form — I might actually see it fully. When I stop to take it in, there is a transcendent joy that comes alive in me as I behold it. Dance is like an extension of everything that is beautiful in nature. It is the palm tree in the hurricane, the swallow in the cloudline, the tempest ocean, the tranquil sea. It is always reaching beyond triviality.
When I think of true freedom, I close my eyes and I think of a child dancing. I think of my free-spirited six-year-old, Mojave. I think of you, I think of me. Close your eyes — you’ll feel it too. And maybe this is the point: to feel like a child. To become a child once again.
For Lisa Broere, founder of Redding’s contemporary dance company, Commune, it certainly has been. Her life bears witness to that truth, though the road home to childlikeness has not been easy.
“I grew up in a kind of unsafe home situation. I was a very shy, hidden girl with lots of emotions, and I remember dance being the only place where I was fully alive — fully free and expressive. It made me feel beautiful,” reflects Lisa.
I think Jesus was on to something when He said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matthew 19:14)
I’ve always believed: we can either make a child’s spirit thrive or break it. It’s a philosophy that has driven my motherhood and shaped a love for children rooted in truly seeing them — to make their light shine brighter rather than dim it.
But this is new to our generation. We have built upon what previous generations had not yet come to understand. We have language for it now. We have research. And the evidence is clear: when children grow up in environments marked by the fear of evaluation and the pressure to perform, they stop exploring, taking risks, tolerating mistakes — and, ultimately, creating freely.
And so, this thief of misunderstanding came for what Lisa once called the joy of life. She had danced her way through conservatory, seemingly on the path toward becoming a professional, but the pursuit of external perfection left her internal world broken and abandoned.
“I think the combination of already struggling with my identity because of my upbringing, and then being in an environment where we were continually critiquing our bodies and dance technique, slowly took away that joy,” she closed her eyes and remembered.
What this dance world left Lisa with was a resounding voice telling her she was not enough. She walked away and thought she’d never look back.
But callings have a funny way of not letting us go.
And herein lies another musing: perhaps we are all being gravitationally pulled toward healing. We can accept it or deny it. We can struggle against it, or we can learn to recognize the invitations when they come.
For Lisa, truly coming to know that dance could be more than what her body could perform took years of healing in safe environments and healthy communities, much of which she found here in Redding, California.
“I had to find freedom again: to step into the studio from a place of, I am enough. From that place, I get to grow in dance, rather than continually believing I am not enough and have to break myself apart to find motivation to get better,” smiled Lisa.
It was from this deeply healed place of knowing — knowing that she is enough — that Lisa could begin to dream again. And with God, she began to dream of a space where dancers belong. Where every dancer has a unique seat at the table, where both the human and the dancer are welcomed to be fully known. A revolutionary evolution of dance.
And in her spirit, she knew that she would one day birth a dance studio.
In the fall of 2022, Commune Dance Company was born. And just like she imagined, it became a place where Lisa would regularly invite her dancers into a deeper kind of communion:
“I want you to see the dance studio as a table where everyone has a chair, and everyone has their name written on a chair. You can decide whether you take that chair or not, but no one else is going to take it.”
As Lisa reclaimed dance for herself, she began to wonder what it might look like to build a studio where every dancer knew that the space they occupied mattered — that their place could not be replaced by someone else.
“We all have strengths. We all have specific, unique flavors that we bring into the room, and fragrances that we bring onto the stage,” says Lisa, who brings an infectious joyful energy to the studio, stage, and everywhere in between. She is truly a gift to this community.
I believe every person is that gift. Look at you. Look at the people you love. We are wonderfully made. So what happens when we create spaces where people are free to discover that for themselves?
When a child feels safe, they play. And when they play, they learn. Lisa has tapped into this truth. Commune is the culmination of years of healing and questioning the typical dance environment: Does it have to be like this?
The environments we create can do more than shape what a person can do. They can shape how a person sees themselves. They can make room for the whole person — to be known, to be cared for, to rise to any occasion. And the dancers are beginning to feel the difference.
“Oh, I can really show up as me. I can show up vulnerable. I can be supported. They want to know me in my life just as much as they want me as a dancer,” says company dancer Tori Ward.
And while this dream was taking shape around Lisa, another was quietly growing within her: motherhood. But for many professional dancers, motherhood can feel like the end of the road.
“In the dance world, there are not a lot of examples of mothers. Before Commune, I thought that once you became a mom, that was it: your dance career was over. You taught at a dance studio in the evenings when your kid was older, and that was your life,” recalls Tori.
And as Lisa became pregnant in the same year Commune was born, she would discover that choosing motherhood did not mean choosing between the woman she was becoming and the dancer she already was.
“With how much I had healed in dance by that point, I believed I could be pregnant, have babies, and still dance. I believed I got to choose that — and create a path for myself to do it. But I was also forging a new path for dancers coming behind me, who had probably struggled with the same question: ‘Will there still be dance if I get pregnant and have babies?'”
At Commune, motherhood and dance don’t just coexist — they inform and inspire one another. And what began as one woman’s choice is becoming something larger.
“We are paving a new highway for dancers, mothers, and community here in Redding: showing that you can still choose to show up as yourself, because that is the best of you — and that is what your kids need at the end of the day,” remarks company dancer Kristen Mohline.
There is something deeply beautiful about a mother becoming an example of the kind of woman she once needed to see. And even more beautiful when her daughter gets to grow up watching her do it.
Lisa is not only paving a new highway for dancers and mothers. She is leaving a legacy for the little girl watching her: Rosalie.
“When I look at Rosalie, I see the healthiest, most vibrant 32-year-old version of myself reflected in my little girl. That is really special, because parts of me that I had to discover and fight for later in life are already so alive in her.”
I got to see a glimpse of that when we filmed Lisa and Rosalie together. There was such a brightness between them — a kind of ease and joy that felt contagious. Lisa’s healing is so evident in the way that she shows up as a mother.
One of the greatest gifts of parenting is seeing that your children are not carrying the same things you had to carry.
Lisa looks at Rosalie and sees it, too.
“I look at her and see this vibrant, bold, confident, independent little girl — someone who loves herself, loves her family, loves the Lord, and is ready to engage with anyone in front of her.”
Maybe this is what healing does. It doesn’t just change the person who heals. It changes what becomes possible for the people who come after.
Our parents could only give us what they knew. We learn, we heal, and we hand something new to the next generation. They get to take the baton a little farther.
Perhaps that is legacy: creating something healthy enough for someone else to inherit. Lisa is dancing that legacy into existence. And Rosalie is already growing up inside of it.
Learn more about Commune Dance Co: communedancecompany.com
Attend their upcoming show with violinist Rebekah van Tinteren — Sep 19, 2026: Get tickets
Check out their adult beginner/intermediate contemporary dance class every Friday at 12:30pm.
Follow Commune on social media: @communedancecompany