Founding Artistic Director Debra Loewen created Wild Space Dance Company in 1986 following a career as an independent choreographer and solo performer. Born and raised in Wisconsin, Loewen began her dance training in Stevens Point, later earning a BFA in dance from the University of Illinois-Champaign Urbana and an MFA in dance from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her early performance work in the 1970s involved computers and site-specific choreography, which helped shape the aesthetic she continues to work with today. Her movement style, experimental musical tastes, application of improvisational structures and process-oriented choreography can be traced to this early work.

While teaching at the University of Delaware, Loewen formed her first company - New Space Company. Site-specific choreography and performance events were New Space Company's hallmark, with performances in buildings, public spaces and natural settings. She later traveled and lived in Bogota, Colombia and Lima, Peru, where she taught, choreographed and performed with Ballet Moderno and the National Ballet of Peru. Returning to the states, Loewen lived and performed in New York, where she began her studies under the mentorship of Robert Ellis Dunn until his death in 1996.

A 2015 Wisconsin Dance Council honoree and 2011 Milwaukee Arts Board Artist of the Year, Loewen has garnered critical acclaim and awards for her choreography, including fellowships from Milwaukee County, the Wisconsin Arts Board and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2007, she was US Postal Service "Women Putting Their Stamp on Metro Milwaukee" honoree. She has created more than 140 works for Wild Space, many of which have been performed to critical acclaim throughout Wisconsin and in Chicago, Minneapolis, New York, Delaware, California, Italy, Japan, and Korea.

Creative adventures have included La Mama ETC's International Symposium of Theater Directors and Choreographers in Umbria, Italy, SUMAC /NYC with Susan Marshall, Door County Kinetic Arts Festival, Dancing On The Ceiling, a tour of solos by women of a certain age. Articles about her site work can be found in Dance Magazine, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Milwaukee Magazine, Shepherd Express, and in Stephen Koplowitz’s book, On Site: Methods for Site-Specific Performance Creation (2022). Loewen has created site work at Stanford University (SDHS), Delaware Art Museum, Villa Terrace Art Museum, The Milwaukee Art Museum. She created Wild Space Parking Lot Dance Series, kept the company dancing during the pandemic. Her most recent site-work, Dances: At the Edge of Understanding was a collaboration with Wild Space’s new Co-Artistic Director, performed outdoors at Milwaukee’s Warehouse Museum as part of the museum’s SEE FOR YOURSELF: William Kentridge Exhibition and Festival.