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Alexx Shilling is a Los Angeles-based choreographer, performer, filmmaker and teacher fully committed to the infinite investigation of movement and its potential to uncover alternative narratives and allow us to remember. Her original choreography and experimental films have been presented nationally and internationally, through residencies including Millay Colony, PAM, UCLA and Ebenbökhaus / Jewish Museum in Munich, and with generous support from institutions including Dance Films Association, Asylum Arts, Yiddishkayt, Center for Cultural Innovation, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, CHIME (with mentor Bob Een) and California Arts Council both as Artistic Director of alexx makes dances and ann and alexx make dances (2004-2010).
She has collaborated as a performer most robustly with Victoria Marks and Richard Rivera/PHYSUAL, and recently in projects by Christine Suarez, Kevin Williamson and Nickels Sunshine. Alexx holds an MFA in Choreography from UCLA’s World Arts & Cultures/Dance Department and a degree in Dance from Skidmore College.
She currently teaches at Loyola Marymount University and Cal State Long Beach, co-founded the performance platforms Hi, Solo and Gold Series and holds certifications in Pilates, Yoga, Open Source Forms and Fleming Technique.
Sarah Leddy, Nguyen Nguyen, Dorothy Dubrule and Carol McDowell in Absence: a History
Absence was a suspicious attempt at constructing a past without proof; it was about creating testimony by first making fake family photographs and using them as movement language. For a change, the theatre space seemed like the perfect shadow box within which to investigate memory.
Highways Performance Space, Los Angeles (2015)
[…] Alexx Shilling is a choreographer who lives and works in Los Angeles. At the present moment, quarantined due to the pandemic, it is impossible for dancers and choreographers to be it the presence of each other. A work Shilling worked on for three years that was slated to premier in June is now up in the air. The piece is titled Nothing There There. It is a physical exploration of visiting sites with Jewish and Yiddish significance pre-WWII. It is a retelling of what it felt like for Shilling to be on the land of her ancestors. Her maternal grandparents came from Poland and what is now Ukraine and her paternal grandparents came from southern Poland. Shilling traveled to these places in 2017 and visited the site where her grandmother was held in a labor camp. Upon arrival home she was able to immediately get into residency and begin work. To hear more about this piece and Alexx Shillings other work, listen to the complete interview. […]
[…] Alexx Shilling is a choreographer who lives and works in Los Angeles. At the present moment, quarantined due to the pandemic, it is impossible for dancers and choreographers to be it the presence of each other. A work Shilling worked on for three years that was slated to premier in June is now up in the air. The piece is titled Nothing There There. It is a physical exploration of visiting sites with Jewish and Yiddish significance pre-WWII. It is a retelling of what it felt like for Shilling to be on the land of her ancestors. Her maternal grandparents came from Poland and what is now Ukraine and her paternal grandparents came from southern Poland. Shilling traveled to these places in 2017 and visited the site where her grandmother was held in a labor camp. Upon arrival home she was able to immediately get into residency and begin work. To hear more about this piece and Alexx Shillings other work, listen to the complete interview. […]