[1] Bass studied modern dance (under Viola Farber) and also creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College (Class of 1993, where she was the commencement speaker).

[7][8] She is a Cave Canem Foundation fellow and her poems, essays and articles have been published in numerous publications including the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Callaloo and Beltway Poetry;[9][10] and in 1999 she was the first person to use the term “Hip-Hop Theater” in print.

[14] She wrote and performed the one-person dance piece Diary of a Baby Diva[15] in Washington DC in 2005, a coming-of-age tale set in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The Washington Post noted her "wicked sense of humor" in making use of the more ridiculous cultural products of the age, but also a lyrical quality revealing her as an "eloquent poet".

[17] In 2018 she wrote and performed The Trans-Atlantic Time Traveling Company, which is "about a sisterhood of three women who time-travel from the present to the 1860s when they become freedwomen, in quest of what it means to be free.