Alexsa Durrans (CV)

Alexsa Durrans (b. Vancouver, BC) is a Canadian choreographer and video artist currently based in Los Angeles. She holds a BA from UCLA World Arts and Cultures/Dance and is currently an MFA Candidate at California Institute of the Arts for Choreography with a concentration in Integrated Media. Alexsa has shown work at spaces such as Night Gallery, Pieter Performance Space, Murmurs Gallery, Navel Los Angeles, AALA Gallery, and Arts on Site in New York. She has worked as a Choreographic Research Fellow for Sidra Bell Dance New York. Alexsa has participated in Frieze Art Fair panels hosted by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Klaus Biesenbach and has directed performance work for Untitled Art Fair Miami. Alexsa co-curates and produces HI SOLO SERIES - a biannual spotlight series for Los Angeles based dance artists which will show at The Geffen Warehouse at MOCA in Spring of 2022. Alexsa works collaboratively and across genres to amplify embodiment and collective experience.

Artist Statement

I create site specific movement assemblages and video works that act as sculptures and landscapes to engage viewers outside of the proscenium dance environment. In shifting movement into new lenses, my work explores visual hierarchies coded into our bodies. My work articulates traces, perpetuations and disruptions of embodiment by structuring particular modes of interacting with choreographed bodies. My work is framed by relentless and enduring ecosystems created by video, stage design, text and movement. I use the tools of cross disciplinarity to provide a frame of reference to the body; a means to connect and reassemble ideas of how the body is activated. My practice researches knowledge sharing systems by letting movement topple over written and verbal language to look at slippages in both forms. I believe that working with the body is always an act of resistance to heterocentric masculine notions of docility and participation in a neo-liberal capitalist state.