Ashton “Stiggity Stackz” Lites is a Boston-based freestyle dancer, choreographer, educator, DJ, and cultural organizer. A first-generation Boston Krump dancer, Ashton has spent more than two decades developing his craft and building opportunities for street dancers locally, nationally, and internationally.

His competitive accomplishments include becoming a champion in Tokyo, placing in the Top 12 at Summer Dance Forever in Amsterdam, becoming a Juste Debout finalist, and twice reaching the national finals of Red Bull Dance Your Style. His work has taken him to cities including Montreal, Amsterdam, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, New York, as well as many other major cities across the US and internationally.

Ashton is the Founder and Executive Director of StiggityStackz Worldwide Inc., a Boston nonprofit that creates pathways for artists and young people to connect with their bodies, movement, rhythm, and creative identities. His programs include Stackin’ Stylez, an international freestyle dance festival; Stack The City, Boston’s neighborhood youth dance league; It St(ARTS) in the Park, a community arts and performance series; and an ongoing list of innovative community initiatives.

As an educator, Ashton teaches Hip Hop movement, freestyle concepts, improvisation, and cultural history. He has served as Hip Hop faculty at Emerson College, a DanceMaker artist-in-residence with Harvard University’s Office for the Arts, and a Boston Artist-in-Residence with the City of Boston Parks and Recreation Department. Across his teaching and community work, Ashton creates welcoming environments where participants can build confidence, explore authentic movement, and discover new possibilities for themselves.

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Project Statement

A crossfader is a sliding control on a DJ mixer that blends or transitions between audio channels, creating space for contrast and unexpected combinations. Stackin’ Stylez: Crossfader applies this principle to movement, exploring connections between regional Black vernacular dance forms and the potential relationship between street-dance battles and theatrical performance.

The project grew out of Stackin’ Stylez, an annual freestyle dance festival centered on a concept-based battle. Competitors respond to shared movement prompts through their distinct styles, cultural knowledge, and lived experiences. This structure builds bridges across regional traditions without erasing their individuality.

Crossfader’s choreographic research centers on five foundational principles: Bounce, Rock, Footwork, Isolation, and Musicality. Although these principles appear across many freestyle forms, they are expressed differently according to geography, music, community, and personal history.

Like a DJ blending songs without sacrificing their individual character, Crossfader brings distinct movement languages and performance traditions into conversation. Rather than asking freestyle dance to conform to theater, the project seeks a structure that preserves its spontaneity, exchange, vulnerability, and cultural integrity.

Can these shared principles become a crossfader between the battle arena and the theater, allowing both spaces to overlap without either losing its identity?