Photography by Justin Patterson
Alaina Wilson is a New Hampshire and New York based choreographer, performer, and visual artist trained in classical ballet, modern, and contemporary dance. She began her dance training at an early age with the Augusta Ballet School in Augusta, GA and, upon moving to New Hampshire, continued training with the Southern New Hampshire Youth Ballet as well as working with Sharon Randolph and Jennifer Howard while attending St. Paul’s School in Concord, NH.
Graduating with honors, she received a BA from Vassar College. She majored in Greek and Roman Studies with a minor in Art History and completed a thesis on the legacy of Ancient Greek dance within contemporary performance. Throughout her time at Vassar, Wilson contributed to the Vassar Repertory Dance Theater as both a performer and choreographer. She received her MFA in Dance from Sarah Lawrence College in 2018. During her graduate and undergraduate studies, she has had the pleasure of working with distinguished artists such as John Jasperse, Jodi Melnick, Sara Rudner, Kathy Westwater, Peggy Gould, John Meehan, Steve Rooks, and Kathy Wildberger.
As a performer, in addition to her own choreography, she has danced in works by Merce Cunningham (restaged by Holley Farmer), Lacina Coulibaly, Seán Curran (staged by Evan Copeland), Stephen Petronio, Zvi Gotheiner, John Meehan, Steve Rooks, and Kathy Wildberger and has performed with the Burklyn Ballet Theater, Grant Jacoby & Dancers, choreographer Nathalie Jonas, and visual artist Jen DeNike.
She began choreographing in 2015 and has presented work at various venues around NYC including the Access Theater, the Actors Fund Arts Center, Chez Bushwick, Dixon Place, Eden’s Expressway, Green Space, SMUSH Gallery, the TADA! Theater, and Triskelion Arts, as well as the Burklyn Ballet Theater in Johnson, VT, Bard College, Sarah Lawrence College, the Bardavon Opera House in Poughkeepsie, NY, and Vassar College. In the fall of 2019, she held a 14-week artistic residency at Chez Bushwick in Brooklyn, NY and, in 2021, a 2-week outdoor choreographic residency at the Catwalk Institute in Catskill, NY .
Her teaching credits include the Ailey School Junior Division and the Bronxville Ballet school in Bronxville, NY.
In addition to her ongoing artistic work, Alaina is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Dance Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Statement
As a choreographer, my process is driven by questions regarding the perception of body, self, and artistic image. My work aims to examine a tension, observed on my part, between human subject and artistic object within the medium of dance. The dancer is a self who both sees and is seen, but where is their power and identity located within the act of performance? How is the self represented if the body is conceived of as an object? I ask these questions based on my own experiences performing classical and contemporary works within the traditions of western theatrical dance. At times, feeling disempowered and disconnected to the work due to expectations and perceptions I’ve felt imposed upon me as a female performer.
These questions are strongly linked to the established practice of viewing dance within the proscenium theater—an often-stagnant configuration in which immobilized spectators can safely cast their objectifying gaze upon the performative space while drawing no attention themselves. Yet what might happen if the objectifying gaze of the audience is dislodged or reconsidered during the dance-viewing experience? My work investigates and seek answers to these questions of perception.
In addition to my personal experiences, my compositional process is supplemented by imagery and content collected through research into the disciplines of art history, aesthetic theory, phenomenology, and contemporary performance theory. I create intricate movement studies in solo and group forms that draw on classical technique while distorting and deconstructing balletic formalism. Integrating minimalistic set pieces and objects, I generate delicate performance environments through which I attempt to externalize the internal sensory experience of the dancer while intensifying viewers’ self-awareness of both their spatial and ideological position in relation to the performance. Presenting my work in both proscenium venues as well as more immersive settings, I hope that audiences who experience my work will recognize their own dynamic presence within the performative environment.