Today we’d like to introduce you to Brandon Fink.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Mission Statement:
“Inspiring vitality through educational programming and providing an exemplary representation of the arts within the St. Louis Community.”
Founded in 2019 by Artistic Director Brandon Fink, La Voûte has grown into a St. Louis-based organization dedicated to creating opportunities for artists to learn, perform, and flourish. La Voûte is proud to call St. Louis home. We are not only performers—we are ambassadors of this city on a global stage. Since our founding, we have worked to demonstrate the depth of artistic talent within St. Louis and create opportunities for local performers to share their work with audiences around the world.
La Voûte Performance Ensemble made its competitive debut during the 2019–2020 winter guard season with All The World’s A Fair, a production inspired by the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. Although that season was cut short by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, La Voûte continued developing its educational and artistic programming. During the 2020–2021 season, the ensemble transitioned to a noncompetitive format focused on training and performance development before returning to competition in subsequent seasons.
Since returning to the competitive floor, La Voûte has experienced a remarkable period of artistic and competitive growth. The ensemble established itself as a leading Independent Open program within the Mid Continent Color Guard Association, earning three consecutive MCCGA Independent Open Class Championships in 2023, 2024, and 2025. That success translated to the national stage through Winter Guard International, where La Voûte advanced to the Independent Open Class Finals in each of those seasons, placing sixth in 2023 and fifth in 2024 before earning a bronze medal in 2025.
In 2026, La Voûte reached another significant milestone by moving into WGI’s Independent World classification. The ensemble was crowned the MCCGA Independent World Class Champion and advanced to the WGI World Championships Independent World Semifinals. This progression—from an emerging St. Louis ensemble to a nationally recognized Independent World program—reflects La Voûte’s continued commitment to artistic excellence, education, and the development of performers from the St. Louis community.
That growth has also been recognized at home. In 2025, the Office of St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer proclaimed November 8 as La Voûte Performance Ensemble Day in the City of St. Louis, recognizing the ensemble’s contributions to the city’s arts community and its representation of St. Louis on a national and international stage. The recognition holds particular significance for an organization whose mission is rooted in both artistic education and representing its hometown through performance.
Educational Programming
Education remains central to La Voûte’s mission. The organization offers programming for a variety of ages and experience levels, providing artistic opportunities to St. Louis-area high school students, emerging artists, and members of the broader local arts community.
The Summer Intensive Series, offered annually between June and September, provides a creative outlet for aspiring color guard performers. Participants can select from Introductory, Apprentice, and Professional levels in dance, flag, rifle, and sabre training. Each class incorporates technical, performance, and choreographic challenges designed around the performer’s skill level.
La Voûte also offers a Masterclass Series between December and February. Participants have the opportunity to study disciplines including contemporary, jazz, ballet, and modern dance with professional dancers from the St. Louis community, alongside members of the current La Voûte Performance Ensemble.
La Voûte Performance Ensemble
La Voûte Performance Ensemble (LVPE) is the organization’s primary competitive program. Auditions for the winter guard season are held each September. Eligible performers are 18 years of age or older and demonstrate advanced skills in movement, flag, and/or weapon disciplines, including rifle and sabre.
LVPE holds preseason rehearsals from October through December, followed by a performance and competition season that generally runs from January through April. The ensemble performs throughout the Midwest under the Mid Continent Color Guard Association and competes nationally through Winter Guard International.
At its core, La Voûte brings together the athleticism and technical precision of the marching arts with the movement, storytelling, and creative expression of the performing arts. Through its competitive ensemble, educational programs, and community partnerships, La Voûte continues to create opportunities for artists to develop their craft while representing St. Louis on both a regional and international stage.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has certainly not been a smooth road and in many ways, that is what makes La Voûte’s story so meaningful.
La Voûte was founded in 2019 with a vision for creating something new in St. Louis: an organization where performers could pursue excellence in the color guard and performing arts while also having access to education, mentorship, and opportunities to grow as artists. We were fortunate to see that vision begin to take shape quickly, but our first years were also met with challenges we could never have anticipated.
Our inaugural competitive season in 2019–2020 was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic. For a performing arts organization built around gathering, rehearsing, traveling, and performing together, the pandemic created an enormous amount of uncertainty. Rather than stepping away from the artistic process, however, La Voûte chose to reimagine what the organization could be.
In 2021, we made the decision to pivot away from the traditional competitive winter guard structure and create a one-of-a-kind main stage production. The result was Textures, a project that challenged us to think differently about what a La Voûte performance could look like. To prioritize the health and safety of our performers while continuing to create, the cast was divided into two groups, and COVID-19 safety mandates were upheld with great integrity throughout the production process.
The result was something truly special: 14 world premieres came together as part of the final Textures performance at the World’s Fair Pavilion in Forest Park. What began as a response to an unprecedented challenge became an opportunity to explore new forms of storytelling, collaboration, and performance. That experience helped reinforce something that continues to define La Voûte today, the ability to adapt without losing sight of our artistic mission.
As the organization has grown, some of our challenges have become logistical in ways that are directly connected to our success. Rehearsal space is one of those challenges. With the size of our cast growing with each passing season, finding an appropriate facility has become increasingly difficult. A rehearsal space for La Voûte needs to accommodate 42 or more performers while providing enough floor space and, critically, enough verticality to safely execute the virtuosic skills that are central to our work. Finding a facility that can meet those needs, is consistently available, and fits within the realities of a nonprofit organization’s budget is no easy feat.
The space itself is more than just a room, it is an essential part of the creative process. Our performers need to be able to safely develop movement, equipment work, choreography, and large-scale staging before taking that work to the performance floor. As La Voûte continues to grow, the need for accessible, appropriate rehearsal infrastructure grows with it.
Another challenge felt throughout the nonprofit community is fundraising and grant writing. La Voûte is no exception. Producing high-quality performances and educational programming requires resources for everything from rehearsal spaces and equipment to instruction, design, travel, and production. Securing those resources year after year is an ongoing challenge.
At the same time, we have been incredibly fortunate to receive tremendous support from the St. Louis community and from supporters beyond our region. That generosity has played a vital role in allowing La Voûte to continue growing and thriving. We never take that support for granted. Every donation, grant, partnership, volunteer hour, and person who shows up to support our performers contributes to the organization’s ability to move forward.
There are also the everyday challenges that come with pursuing an ambitious artistic vision. Our performers balance La Voûte with school, careers, family, and other responsibilities. Our staff and designers are constantly working to create productions that challenge our performers while maintaining the identity and artistic voice of the organization. Growth brings its own challenges, and every new level of competition requires us to reevaluate what we are doing and how we can continue improving.
There have been unexpected setbacks, financial and logistical challenges, periods of uncertainty, and plenty of moments when the next step was not obvious. But those challenges have also shaped who we are. They have taught us to be creative when circumstances change, resilient when resources are limited, and intentional about the community we are building.
La Voûte’s story is ultimately about continuing to move forward, learning, adapting, and finding new ways to create opportunities for artists. We are proud of what we have accomplished, but perhaps even more proud that through every challenge, La Voûte has remained committed to its original purpose: to inspire vitality through education, performance, and the arts while proudly representing St. Louis wherever we perform.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Artist/Creative
My career has always existed at the intersection of the marching arts and professional dance, and that intersection ultimately became the foundation for La Voûte Performance Ensemble.
I am originally from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and began my performance training in 2003. My early experiences in the marching arts shaped me tremendously as a performer and educator. I performed with Sarajevo Winter Guard in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, in 2004, followed by Insignia Winter Guard in the Dallas–Fort Worth area from 2005–2007. I later choreographed and performed with Eclectix Winter Guard in Oklahoma City and Central Independent in Edmond, Oklahoma. I was also fortunate to be a member of the Bluecoats Drum and Bugle Corps from 2005–2008.
Those experiences taught me the discipline, collaboration, physicality, and attention to detail that are required to create performance at a high level. They also introduced me to the power of ensemble performance, what can happen when a group of individuals commits to a shared artistic vision.
At the same time, I was developing as a dancer. I received my B.F.A. in Dance Performance from the University of Central Oklahoma and later attended the American Dance Festival, where I was selected to perform Twyla Tharp’s Sweet Fields. My professional dance career has included work with MADCO, The Muny, Variety Theatre, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Bach Society of St. Louis, Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis, and Saint Louis Dance Theatre, formerly The Big Muddy Dance Company. I have also had the opportunity to design and instruct programs throughout the St. Louis area and work with The Cavaliers Drum and Bugle Corps.
Choreography has become another important part of my career. My work has been presented by organizations and institutions including Saint Louis Dance Theatre, the University of Missouri–St. Louis, the University of Central Oklahoma, Florida Atlantic University, the Oklahoma Contemporary Dance Festival, the St. Louis Arts Alliance, MADCO, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, and the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, among others.
Looking back, I don’t necessarily see these experiences as separate chapters. They have all informed one another. My background in color guard and drum corps taught me about ensemble, precision, and performance; my dance training taught me about movement, storytelling, and artistic expression; and my professional experiences in the arts taught me about collaboration, adaptability, and the realities of sustaining a career in the performing arts.
That combination of experiences is what ultimately led me to create La Voûte Performance Ensemble in 2019. I wanted to create an organization that could bring those worlds together, to give performers the opportunity to experience the technical rigor of the marching arts while also exploring the depth, vulnerability, and artistic freedom of dance and contemporary performance.
Today, I serve as Founder and Artistic Director of La Voûte Performance Ensemble and Director of Education at Saint Louis Dance Theatre. Both roles allow me to continue doing what has always been at the center of my career: creating opportunities for artists to grow, challenging performers to discover what they are capable of, and finding new ways to connect audiences with the performing arts.
For me, being an artist is not simply about performing. It is about remaining curious, continuing to learn, creating opportunities for others, and contributing something meaningful to the artistic community around you. That philosophy has guided my career and continues to shape the work we do at La Voûte.
What matters most to you? Why?
What matters most to me is creating opportunities for people to discover what they are capable of.
Throughout my career, I have been fortunate to experience the performing arts from many different perspectives, as a student, performer, choreographer, educator, and now as the founder and artistic director of La Voûte Performance Ensemble. Each of those experiences has reinforced the same belief: the arts have the ability to change how people see themselves and how they understand the world around them.
For me, success isn’t simply measured by a placement, a medal, or a standing ovation. Those moments are meaningful, and I am incredibly proud of what La Voûte has accomplished competitively, but what matters most is what happens along the way. It is watching a performer gain confidence, seeing someone discover a new physical or artistic ability, or watching a group of individuals become a community because they committed themselves to something bigger than any one person.
That is a large part of why education is so important to me. I want performers to leave our programs with more than technical skills. I want them to become better collaborators, communicators, artists, and human beings. I want them to understand that their voice has value and that there is a place for their creativity.
I also care deeply about St. Louis and its artistic community. La Voûte was created here because I believe in the talent that exists in this city. There are extraordinary artists and performers in St. Louis, and I want to help create more opportunities for them to remain here, grow here, collaborate here, and represent this community beyond its borders. Being recognized by the City of St. Louis in 2025 with the proclamation of November 8 as La Voûte Performance Ensemble Day was incredibly meaningful because it reflected something that has always been central to our mission: we are proud to be a St. Louis organization.
I also believe that artists have a responsibility to create pathways for the people who come after them. I have benefited from teachers, directors, choreographers, organizations, and mentors who invested their time and belief in me. I see La Voûte as an opportunity to continue that cycle, to take what I have learned throughout my career and use it to create opportunities for the next generation of artists.
Ultimately, what matters most to me is people and the impact we can have on one another through the arts. Productions eventually end, seasons come to a close, and competitive scores become part of history. What stays with us are the relationships, the lessons, the confidence we helped someone discover, and the memories we created together.
If La Voûte can give someone a place to belong, a reason to believe in themselves, and the courage to pursue something they once thought was beyond their reach, then we have accomplished something far more meaningful than anything that can be measured on a score sheet.
Pricing:
- Summer Intensive – $30
- Masterclass Series – $10
- La Voûte T-Shirt – $15
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lavoutestl.org/
- Instagram: @lavoutestl
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LaVouteSTL
