PERIDANCE FACULTY
Guest / Past
Alex Swader
Contemporary
BIOGRAPHY
Alexsander Swader is from Birmingham, Alabama where he grew up training at the Royal Academy of Dance accredited Alabama Ballet School. While attending intensives like Hubbard Street Winter Intensive and Nederlands Dans Theater Summer Intensive, they also performed various professional roles with the Alabama Ballet Company. He received a BFA in Dance in 2021on scholarship from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and performed guest works by artists like Shamel Pitts and Rena Butler. He joined Hubbard Street Dance Chicago in 2022 as a guest artist for their Season 45: Sapphire Season and YYDC in 2023 for multiple projects like the world premiere of Nowhere at Chelsea Factory. They continue to work with Yue Yin rehearsing for performances of Ripple and Through the Fracture of Light at APAP and Nowhere at the Schrittmacher Festival in Germany in 2024.
In between rehearsing and performing with YYDC Alexsander also enjoys a successful freelance career in NYC consisting of experiences like performing in the Wiederhoeft NYFW SS 2024 Fashion Show at LaMama Theater, being a filmmaker/choreographer at Films That Move film festival in Virginia, and teaching at/with esteemed institutions like Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Alabama Ballet School, Peridance Center and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Dance Department.
CLASS DESCRIPTION
Class will begin by waking up the entire surface area of the body in order to bring the nervous system into a heightened state of awareness. We will then make our way through a set of improvisational ideas and tasks which we will utilize to build heat, increase blood flow, and gain greater precision regarding qualities and pathways of movement. The goals of the warm up are to find increased physicality, heightened embodiment, challenging athleticism and most importantly the joy of movement. This is all done through a sense of light hearted low stakes exploration in order to facilitate a feeling of safety and welcomeness.
A phrase will be taught during the second half of the class. The phrase will be utilized as a tool to discover and/or better understand qualitative dynamics within the body and how to accomplish them with clarity and ingenuity. It will also be used to find new movement pathways which will challenge the brain to body connection. Speed, full embodiment, qualities, textures, morphing, clarity and articulation are some of the ideas we will be focusing on in this class.