"The Foundry is onto something that feels both real and true." Dance Magazine, 2003

 

Alex Ketley

Artistic Director / Co-Founder


Alex trained as a dancer at the Washington Ballet, the School of American Ballet and the Royal Danish Ballet. In 1994 he moved to California to join the San Francisco Ballet where he performed a wide range of classical and contemporary repertory including the work of William Forsythe, James Kudelka, and George Balanchine. In 1998 he left the ballet to co-found The Foundry in order to explore his deepening interests in choreography, improvisation, mixed media work, and collaborative process. In addition to his initital years directing The Foundry, Alex worked for Alonzo King's LINES Ballet as both a dancer and choreographer from 2000-2002. With The Foundry he has created dance, installation, and video pieces during residencies at the Headlands Center for the Arts (CA), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (CA), The Yard (MA), ODC Theater (CA), the Santa Fe Art Institute (NM), the Ucross Foundation (WY), and the Taipei Artist Village in Taiwan. Independent of his work with The Foundry, he has been a guest choreographer at North Carolina School for the Arts and Florida State University, and his work has received the National Choo-San Goh Award and the inaugural Princess Grace Award for Choreography, as well as awards from the Hubbard Street 2 National Choreography Competition, and the International Choreographic Competition of the Festival des Arts de Saint-Sauveur in Quebec, Canada. In 2001 he began a relationship with Hubbard Street 2, and created four pieces for the company that have been toured internationally. For 2005 he received funding from the Creative Work Fund and created his first systemic work, Syntax, with California poet Carol Snow, funding from the Irvine Foundation and created Lost Line which explored California's diverse cultural and physical landscape through the use of improvisation and video, and was commissioned from both Jim Vincent for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and Robert Moses for his company KIN. In 2006 he was appointed Resident Choreographer at the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, and commissioned to create new work for the dance departments at Stanford University and San Francisco State University. In 2007 Ketley had a residency at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography in Florida, was awarded a yearlong CHIME Grant/Residency to mentor with veteran artist Charlie Moulton, created a new work for Ballet Met's 30th anniversary program, and premiered a new Foundry project exploring contemporary Iranian poetry in collaboration with The Translation Project's founder Niloufar Talebi. In 2008 Alex won 2nd Place in the BNC 21st Century National Choreography Competition, and was commissioned to create new works in Arizona, Ohio, Colorado, Seattle, and Chicago. In the Bay Area he created a new Foundry piece called "Monument" for ODC's inaugural "Local Heros" Festival, and also built a new work in collaboration with Carol Snow for the countries premiere integrated dance company, AXIS, in celebration of their 20th anniversary season. The duet from this work won an Isadora Duncan Award and was considered one of the Top Ten Bay Area Dance Performances of 2008 by both Voice of Dance and the San Francisco Chronicle.

In addition to a number of commissions, for 2009 Alex will return to the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography as a Choreographic Fellow and is one of six choreographers to recieve a prestigious Gerbode-Hewlett Commission to create the new work Theater-Irrelevant.

Click here to see a video of Alex's work.

Alex's Resume and Headshot.

To email Alex click here.

--------------------

Christian Burns

Artistic Director/Co-Founder

Throughout the past fifteen years Christian has taught and performed a wide range of work in various companies, schools and art centers throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. His work has developed from a background in professional ballet as well as fifteen years of exploring the practice and presentation of Improvisation.

After receiving his formal training from The School of American Ballet he became a company member for the James Sewell Ballet and Alonzo King's Lines Ballet. In 2007 he was a guest artist with The Forsythe Company for the creation of the installation-performance EQUIVALENCE, which was presented in Dresden Germany. In 1998 he co-founded The Foundry. Christian performs internationally with some of the most accomplished dance-improvisors, such as; Kirstie Simson, Katie Duck, Michael Schumacher, Ave Karczag, Charlie Morrissey and Chris Aiken among others. Additionally he has worked in visual and video media and approaches dance as an extension of a greater interdisciplinary body of expression.

Christian has been awarded the Massachussetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship for Choreography, a McKnight Artist Fellowship for Dancers, the Paula Citron Award for Choreography from the Moving Pictures Festival and the National Choo-San Goh Award for Choreography . His dance-video work has been screened at the Impakt Festival in the Netherlands, the Moving Works Festival in Canada, Dutch National Television, the Roberta Beck Cinema in New York and the Stuttgart Film/Winter Festival in Germany. Christian has been an artist in residence at the Experimental Television Center in New York and the Taipei Artist Village in Taiwan. His choreographic work has been performed for the Walker Art Center, the James Sewell Ballet, Alonzo King's Lines Ballet, The Laban Center, Ballet Arts Minnesota, San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, the Unmiversity of Michigan and Mt. Holyoke College.

In 2007 Christian co-founded, with three visual artists, the Parsons Hall Project Space based in Holyoke Massachusetts. Parsons Hall is an interdisciplinary arts center offering a residency program and public presentations for visual art, installation and performance work.

He is an ongoing faculty member of the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance and the Lines Ballet School.

Christian Burns webpage:

www.christianburns.net

To email Christian click here.

 

History
Director Bios
Affiliates
Contributing
Press
Repertory

School