Courses
In The Studio
Term
Category
Modality
Instructor(s)
- (-) Alia Swersky
- (-) Chelsea Cook
- Paul Lebel
- BC Campbell
- Daniel Goody
- Winnie Westergard
- Zoe Crago
- Brad Taylor
- David Taylor Gomes
- Ellen Forney
- Geof Alm
- J. Gordon
- Jeff Brice
- Jimmy Shields
- Lauren Boilini
- Leanna Keith
- Lily Hotchkiss
- Lucie Baker
- Meg McLynn
- Nicole Beerman
- Nikki Rice
- Robynne Raye
- Samar Abulhassan
- Sarah Bixler
Improvisational Practices
Alia Swersky
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.
Costume Design
Chelsea Cook
Chelsea Cook is a freelance costume designer, educator, and business owner. Her work has been seen at Kentucky Opera, Seattle Shakespeare Company, Seattle Opera, Village Theatre, Tacoma Opera, George Street Playhouse, ArtsEmerson, and more. Select favorite designs include Ernest Shackleton Loves Me (Off-Broadway Alliance Award, Second Stage Theatre); O+E (Seattle Opera) She’s Come Undone (Gregory Award Nomination, Book-It); What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (Book-It Repertory); and Medea (Seattle Shakespeare Co.). She has a B.A. from Cornish College of the Arts.