I was born into a military family in Honolulu, HI and moved to the Pacific Northwest as a toddler. Already singing and dancing by the age of two, I began my formal dance training at the age of 8 while attending Elk Plain School of Choice, an arts elementary school that allowed me to study all disciplines of dance.

Over the years, my strong passion for music & the arts has given me the opportunity to sing and share the stage with the likes of Sugar Ray, Keith Sweat, (the REAL) Lady-A, Kim Archer and Tiffany Wilson. Singing has also allowed me to perform for the Seattle Seahawks Season Opener and the Make a Wish Foundation.

If you are local to the Seattle area, you may have seen me acting on stage at Village Theatre, Tacoma Musical Playhouse, or ACT Theatre. I’ve also directed and choreographed for Showtunes Theatre Company, Seattle Repertory Theatre, The 5th Avenue Theatre, Village Theatre, Theatre Puget Sound and Tacoma Arts Live.

On this site you will get to see all sides of me. Be it through my words, my music, or my movement, I hope I make you feel something.

Alia Swersky is a movement artist, performer and educator deeply engaged in dance improvisation, durational time-based art, film, site-specific work, and environmental installation. She is an artist and an educator with degrees from Cornish College of the Arts and an MFA in dance from the University of Washington.

Her artistic path over the last two decades has been shaped by this yearning for deep and meaningful connections with people and places. As a co-creator, ritual maker, and a “horizontal” director, Alia seeks to touch others through dance, somatic presence, vulnerability, and fierceness. Her work ranges from full audience participation to intimate acts of One-to-One performances, site-specific dances for film and live performance, as well as durational time-based art that includes physical acts of endurance, repetition, stillness, subtlety, singing, soft energetic grace, abstraction, caricature, and a deconstruction of clichés such as extreme high femme expressions. Her teaching and art-making seek to create practices that embrace endurance on stage and in life as acts of resistance, resilience, release, and beauty. 

As a performer, Alia has also toured nationally and internationally as a member of the LeGendre Performance Group and has performed in the works with many Seattle artists, some of which include The Maureen Whiting Company, Khambatta Dance Company, Jurg Koch, KT Niehoff, and Salt Horse.

As an educator, she has taught at Cornish College of the Arts for sixteen years and in the Seattle community at Velocity’s Strictly Seattle Festival, and the Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation (SFDI). She was a long time Co-artistic director of Dance Art Group (DAG), a non-profit organization that promotes the practice and appreciation of dance and somatic education in the Seattle area, including the Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation.

Lucie Baker is a dance artist, educator, and expressive arts facilitator based in Seattle, Washington. Her parents met in a community folk dance group so social dancing is in her bones. She loves social dance for its joy, community, and expansive self-expression. As a teacher, she strives to create a supportive environment where students can connect and explore. Her classes integrate her background in western concert dance and social dance with her love of somatics and anatomy. From a young age she was surrounded by a diversity of dance styles including swing, ballet, modern, balkan folk dance, and more. Her curiosity for movement led her to pursue a career as a professional performer and choreographer in New York City and abroad working with many notable artists including Jane Comfort, Tamar Rogoff, Erica Essner, Phantom Limb and Seattle Opera. In her training, she earned a BFA from the Juilliard School and an MFA from the University of Washington. After many years of performing, creating, and teaching, she became interested in the intersection of dance and mental health and received her expressive arts therapy training at the Tamalpa Institute, founded by Anna and Daria Halprin. She continues to develop her artistic practice alongside while also serving as a faculty member at Cornish College of the Arts, University of Washington and Century Ballroom.

Diana Trotter (she/her) is a Seattle-based actor, director, educator and coach. Locally she has performed with Taproot Theatre Co, Annex Theatre, Center Stage, Second Story Rep, Thalia’s Umbrella, UW Theatre, and Fern Shakespeare. She has also been seen on stages in Texas, Illinois, Montana, California, Oregon and Idaho. Favorite roles include Mrs. Bennett in Pride & Prejudice, Roz in 9 to 5, Mae Peterson in Bye Bye Birdie, Vivian Bearing in Wit, and Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing (twice!). Recent directing projects include Into the Woods (Icicle Creek Center for the Arts), Camelot, and Christopher Durang’s Vanya, Sonia, Masha and Spike (Contra Costa Theatre) and Steven Dietz’s Last of the Boys (The Modern, Spokane). Diana specializes in audition preparation and has taught auditioning master classes for the University of Washington, Seattle Youth Opera, and Viva Vocalists where she is also the acting coach for their musical theatre training program. Diana holds a PhD from UC Berkeley and is the former head of the acting program at Whitworth University in Spokane.