performer | director | choreographer | dancer | educator
Alex Oliva is a creator of worlds, a storyteller. A dancer, like a creature disappearing into the foggy night air, bent, broken, reaching back to you. She'll make you laugh even if she scares you or makes you cry. She'll take you away from here, but she's here for you.
Recent choreography credits : Salon of Seduction: Poor Things Experience [Maison Premiere, Brooklyn, NY 2023], Dragonslayer [Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, WA 2024], Recess (Meet Me in the Way Back Field) [14 St Y, The Visionary, and others, 2023], The Sunbather [Leigh Folk Festival, UK, Grand Hospice, Brussels, Belgium, C’mon Everybody, Brooklyn Bowl, Brooklyn, NY, and others 2022-23], So Many Me’s [Higher Ground Festival, 2022].
Recent performance credits: New York City Children’s Theater’s My First Nutcracker [roles: Clara Marie, female swing, rehearsal director, Theater Row, NYC 2022 & 2023], Little Cinema’s goblintown [Chelsea Music Hall, various locations throughout NYC, 2022], The Lost Supper, Inferno, The King's Winter Masquerade, and Mayfair [The Mckittrick Hotel, NYC 2018-2020], The San Francisco Symphony House Of YES, Navarra Novy-Williams, Bill Hayward, Kara Davis’ project agora, BodyStories: Teresa Fellion Dance, and others.
Awards: McMinnville Short Film Festival: Best Horror/ Thriller [2024], San Francisco Dance Film Festival: Audience Award [2018], LA Dance Film Festival: Standard Vision Showcase Award & Audience Award [2017], Isadora Duncan Award: Outstanding Performance by a Company [2012].
“ I thrive in collaborative settings and seek to work with artists of all disciplines to enhance the impact of my work. Growing out of recent developments in immersive theater, my creations begin when the audience enters the space and finish when they leave. As a choreographer, I work with universal human experiences such as love, death, identity, compassion, and humor. Overall, my goal is to create compelling performances that help people connect to their imagination, to themselves, and to each other.”
–Alex Oliva
After attending the LINES Ballet School Training Program, Alex made a career as a freelance performer, choreographer, and teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area while pursuing her BFA from Saint Mary’s College of California, graduating summa cume laude in 2014.
Upon moving to New York City in 2013, Alex co-founded AnA Collaborations whose works have been presented in theaters, galleries, cinemas, and non-traditional spaces throughout NYC and nationwide. Venues include Good Shepherd Center, Gibney, Dixon Place, CPR, Abrons Arts Center (commissioned by Columbia University), The Tank, INSITU Site-Specific Festival, NARS Foundation, HappyLucky no.1, and others.
Alex began studying improvisation and listening practices with visual artists and musicians in 2009 and has collaborated as a performer, director, and choreographer with musicians, filmmakers, composers, writers, and visual artists to create narrative cinematic works that are intensely engaging, visceral, tender, dark, and abstract yet accessible to a wide array of audiences. Her current collaboration with Grammy award-winning saxophonist, composer, and mover Johnny Butler has presented work at Brooklyn Bowl, NYU Frederick Loewe Theater, Wild Project, and other top music venues and galleries throughout NYC.
With over 10 years of experience as an educator in New York and California, Alex has mentored teachers in bringing art and collaborative processes to the classroom throughout the Bronx and Pennsylvania. She currently serves as a program coordinator for LEAP NYC. She also offers private movement coaching to musicians for performances and music videos, and has served as a rehearsal director for companies in New Jersey and NYC. She has taught at Gibney, LINES Dance Center, and Dance Project of Washington Heights and has been guest faculty at the All Stars Project.