Artist Statement

I create original works that challenge and reframe the societal expectations and values assigned to the woman’s body. My work is rooted in body identity, an identity which is informed and shaped by socio-economics, sexuality, and power structures. My work recognizes that an eating disorder is a symptom of these powers that affects the mental and physical well being of an individual. 

As a young girl I was taught to idolize the ballet body: long limbs and neck, small head and breasts, lithe, angelic, pure, and weightless. As a choreographer I reject this infantilization and ageist approach to the female dancing body that permeates not only the dance world but society as a whole.

As an eating disorder survivor, my relationship with gravity is significant.

The feeling of gravity pulling on my body and the tactile sensations of moving through space are a reminder that I take up space - that I have weight. Sometimes I want my fingertips to pull me into a silent flight to defy gravity and its desire to shape me. Other times I want to feel gravity thunderously pulling me to the ground. I combat the desire to be small and silent and the aspiration to be like a bird and freed of gravity.

I explore the ways an eating disorder or body dissatisfaction shapes or alters a person’s relationship with gravity and the physical world.

Sensation is the information that our physical, somatic bodies need in order to gain knowledge that can be communicated with the rest of the body. When this communication is broken, through starvation for example, a dissociation between our physical and mental selves is created. This dissociation serves as a catalyst in informing how I coach the dancers through the movement. I cue them by talking about the transfer of weight and length and energy; I ask them to listen to their body. This allows them to perform in a way that is incredibly sensual, that captures what it feels like to dance in human flesh with skin, hair, bones, and eyes.

I seek to recalibrate the value of the human body. 

Process Statement

As a choreographer, my visions come to life through collaboration. I start with a goal, or seed idea for each project then mobilize an ensemble of artists who have lived experience around it. My process relies on trust, vulnerability, and building an internal community. My process also relies on my physical participation. Since sensation and gravity are vital components to the work, it is imperative for me to be physically engaged in order to feel the movement in my body and understand its relevance to the work. I value my artists’ bodies by placing equal value on their time, wellbeing, and art. Through sustained conversation the artists create their own access point into the material that is unique to them. This becomes the basis for their performance, and the transference of my ideas, directions, and choreography into their body. In doing this I recalibrate the value of their bodies.

Biography

Alexandra is a Carpatho-Rusyn American choreographer based in Minneapolis, MN. She creates original works ranging from solos to evening length group works for the stage and screen. She is a 2021 Ann & Weston Hicks Choreography Fellow at Jacob’s Pillow and a 2022 & 2020 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow Finalist (Jerome Foundation). Her most recent work, капустянка : CABBAGE EATER, was commissioned by Alternative Motion Project for their show Viewpoints ’22, which premiered at The Southern Theater in October 2022. Her second evening length work, Rock, Paper, Scissors, will premiere at The Southern Theater in March 2023.

She hails from Pittsburgh, PA where she graduated from Bodiography Contemporary Ballet’s College Preparatory Program. While attending Ohio University she spent a semester in Avignon, France training at the Conservatoire d’Avignon under Cyrille de la Barre. She ultimately earned a BFA in Dance Performance and Choreography and a BA in French.

In addition to her Western European training, Alexandra has studied a wide range of Eastern European folk dance traditions. As a member of the North Hills Junior Tamburitzans, she was taught by the renowned Željko Jergan with a primary focus on Croatian dances. She performed with Slavjane Folk Ensemble, the sole Carpatho-Rusyn children’s dance ensemble in the United States. Under the direction of Jack Poloka she toured Slovakia, Poland and Ukraine, exploring the diasporic homeland and cultural landscape of the Carpatho-Rusyns. In college she studied Ghanaian dance and drumming under the direction of Paschal Yao Younge and Zelma Badu-Younge and was a member of their group Azaguno African Dance Ensemble during her senior year.

Alexandra returned to Pittsburgh for several years after college and worked in productions with Attack Theatre and STAYCEE PEARL dance project. She originated roles in Bricolage Production Company’s production STRATA (2012), an immersive theater show in which she played ‘the girl left at prom,’ and in Mark Conway Thompson’s Kimono (2016) in which she played the role of ‘Predator.’ It was her experience in STRATA that prompted Alexandra to pursue her first project, CONNOTATIONS: unknown, a half evening length work that premiered in 2014.  Of it Jane Vranish of Pittsburgh CrossCurrents wrote that was “…an intense compilation…ranging from tentative touching to violence….Very powerful”.

In 2015 she presented Dance! From the Inside Out at the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival, a site specific, multi genre performance that became ‘a unique performing experience that … lifted the energy of the Festival” (Pittsburgh Dance Examiner). In 2016 she presented her first evening work, Something Pretty, at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater in Pittsburgh. This work was pivotal in Alexandra’s choreographic career because, as an eating disorder survivor, it was the first time she recognized the impact of this disease on her as an artist and human. Excerpts of this work have also been presented in New York and Minneapolis.

She has performed in works by Minneapolis based artists including Berit Ahlgren, Helen Hatch, Carl Flink, Jeffrey Peterson, Ethnic Dance Theatre, April Sellers, Rosy Simas, BodyCartography, and Laurie Van Wieren. In 2021 she was part of Polish artist Paulina Olowska’s work, Grotesque Alphabet, at the Walker.

Since relocating to Minneapolis she has been commissioned by Threads Dance Project, the Performing Institute of Minnesota, and Alternative Motion Project. She has also presented work at The Cowles Center for Dance & the Performing Arts, Candy Box Dance Festival/Arena Dances, Zenon Dance Zone, Future Interstates, and 9x22 dance lab at the Bryant Lake Bowl. In 2020 she premiered her first dance film Heritage Sites which was selected for the Astoria Film Festival (Finalist), 48th annual Athens International Film and Video Festival, DanceBARN Screendance Festival, Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema (CO), Blow-Up Arthouse Filmfest - Chicago (Semi-Finalist), and ADF’s Movies by Movers.

In Motion