Artist Statement

I am a dancer, performer, creator, friend, parent, partner, storyteller, creature, shapeshifter who shares movement-based works that help people connect to their imagination, to themselves, and to each other.

My work offers audiences and collaborators visceral, earnest, absurd, unsettling, tragic, tender, humorous, heartfelt, experiences that scare us and make us laugh, that take us to other dimensions and to visit our family at the same time. Through movement, sound, and design, I embody narratives we all recognize: stories about love, death, time, making dinner, climbing the ladder, heartbreak, loss, outer space, mistakes, perception, compassion. At the core of my work is a commitment to truth, presence, and honest connection—values that are more powerful than affectation or perfect technique.

Since 2009, I have collaborated as a performer, director, and choreographer with other movement makers, musicians, actors, filmmakers, composers, writers, and visual artists. Together, we have created interdisciplinary dance-theater works, enlivened music concerts, activated nontraditional spaces, and expanded how audiences experience performance. Blurring the lines between artistic disciplines has taught me how ideas flourish through trust, commitment, shared risk, vulnerability, and experimentation.     

I combine the real-time decision making of improvisation with composed movement, narrative, sound, and design to connect equally to the intended story and to the present moment, reflecting existing and future stories, replaying them back upside down and in another color. I practice deep listening and somatic, nervous-system awareness to bend time and thicken the air from the moment we enter the space until the moment we leave. Classical and modern dance techniques live deeply in my body, and I revisit these pathways as options for clear, grounded movement vocabulary. The work is unique: dancers, musicians, actors, and sometimes audience members alike are included as people within the visual narrative. My ongoing exploration of somatic awareness, character, and immersive storytelling, invites more possibility, ease, and connection into how we move, witness, and are together.

Short Bio

Alex Oliva (she/her) is a New York City-based performer, choreographer, director and educator. Her performance and choreographic experience spans dance, film, immersive theater, and improvisation, with performance credits including Luna Luna at The Shed, The Mckittrick Hotel, New York City Children’s Theater, The San Francisco Symphony, House Of YES, Navarra Novy-Williams, Bill Hayward, and others. She co-directs AnA Collaborations whose works have been presented at Gibney, Abrons Art Center, CPR, Dixon Place, The Tank, Wild Project, and most recently, Good Shepherd Center in Seattle, WA. AnA's films have circulated film festivals nationwide, earning multiple Artistic Achievement and Audience Awards. Since 2017, Alex and saxophonist/ mover Johnny Butler have created improvisational yet narrative movement & sound performances in music venues, theaters, galleries, and other unconventional locations including  NYU Frederick Loewe Theater, 14 St Y, Brooklyn Bowl, Wild Project, and abroad in the UK and Belgium.

Long Bio

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.