Choreography

Alex Ketley

Independent choreographer; artistic director of the dance company known as The Foundry; resident choreographer of the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance

Biography

In addition to his key role as faculty member and resident choreographer of the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, Alex is very active as both an independent choreographer and artistic director of the dance company known as The Foundry.

Formerly a member of the San Francisco Ballet, he retired from dancing full-time in 1998 to co-found The Foundry as a vehicle through which to more deeply explore his interests in choreography, improvisation, mixed media work, and the collaborative process.

For The Foundry, he has created numerous dance, installation, and video works as Artist-in-Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts (California), the Santa Fe Art Institute (New Mexico), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (California), The Yard (Massachusetts), ODC Theater (California), Taipei Artist Village (Taiwan), and the Ucross Foundation (Wyoming)—a body of work that has established for the company a growing reputation within both the dance and fine art communities.

Independent of The Foundry, Alex has created works for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago (both first and second companies), Robert Moses’ KIN, BalletMet, DanceWorks Chicago, Ballet Nouveau Colorado, BODYTRAFFIC, and AXIS Dance Company (through the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography’s “Free to Rep” program in Florida), as well as for the dance departments of Stanford University, San Francisco State University, North Carolina School for the Arts, and Florida State University.

Alex’s work has received the national Choo-San Goh Award, the inaugural Princess Grace Award for Choreography, and a CHIME Fellowship, as well as awards from the Hubbard Street 2 National Choreography Competition and the International Choreographic Competition of the Festival des Arts de Saint-Sauveur in Quebec. He was awarded a grant from the Creative Work Fund to develop a systemic work with California poet Carol Snow, and received funding from the Irvine Foundation to explore California’s diverse cultural and physical landscape through the use of video and improvisation.

In 2008 Alex’s work “To Color Me Different” won an Isadora Duncan Award for best ensemble performance and was considered one of the top ten performances of the year by both Voice of Dance and the San Francisco Chronicle. In 2009 he was awarded a prestigious Gerbode Hewlett Choreographer Commissioning Award to create the new piece “Please Love Me”, which premiered with The Foundry in May of 2010 and is being performed throughout the year in California.

For 2011, Alex has been commissioned to create new works in: San Francisco; New York City; Boulder, Colorado; Austin, Texas; and Leipzig, Germany.

Selected press quotes:

  • “The Foundry, a multimedia dance company, has made some seriously beautiful dances” – San Francisco Bay Guardian, 2000
  • “The Foundry takes Bay Area dance to the next stage” – San Francisco Chronicle, 2002
  • “The Foundry is at the vanguard of American dance” – San Francisco Chronicle, 2003
  • “[The Foundry’s] sold out … opening night in the Forum of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts brought great news for modern dance” – San Francisco Chronicle, 2003
  • “emotionally cool mix of skewed classicism, postmodern fragmentation, and stunning video projections” – San Francisco Chronicle, 2006
  • “One of the most riveting Bay Area dances of 2008” – Voice of Dance, 2008
  • “Ketley’s mesmerizing Silt expressed more about the human conodition than most playwrights achieve with two hours of text” – Broad Street Review, 2009
  • “When words fail, a turn of a cheek or small shift in stance can signify a world of meaning. Choreographer, and director … Alex Ketley is hyperconscious of the subtly secrets our bodies both hide and reveal” – Examiner.com, 2010