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.

Jul 1 - Jul 31 (T/TH 1 - 4PM) | Course Cost: $657.00

About the Course

Sessions

Location

Kerry Hall

Modality

In Person

Age Requirement

14 -18

Level

All Levels

Class Capacity

Materials Required

Students are given supplies for this elective.

Dancers will immerse themselves in solo, duet, and ensemble dance improvisation practices drawing from American post-modern and contemporary dance traditions. This improvisational dance intensive will be a deep inquiry into the body as a means to play and explore a multifaceted range of movement possibilities and expressions. Dancers will learn to develop connections to their unique ways of moving as a means to understanding their artistic voice. Dancers will be in collaboration with one another in exploring improvisational movement structures and scores for ensemble work, as well as exploring solo dancing, and duet forms, such as Contact Improvisation.

While this intensive may be taken independently, it is an elective that is designed to work in conjunction with our Dance Intensive 4-week program. Please see that description here or email plus@cornish.edu if you have any questions.

How the Summer@Cornish program works:

3 ways to Participate - Full-Day - Half Day - One Intensive

Full-Day Program

1 Morning Intensive
- M-F 9AM - 12PM
2 Afternoon Electives
- M/W/F & T/Th 1PM - 4PM

Half-Day Program

Students can select a combination of:

1 Intensive + 1 Elective
Only Intensive
Only Elective

Residency Program

Full-Day Program
Evening & Weekend Activities
Extra studio Time
Learn more here...

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All Courses

Improvisational Practices

Improvisational Practices

About the Course

How the Summer@Cornish program works:

Main Campus Center

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