Profile: Alexa Wilson
We have been privileged to have Berlin-based New Zealand choreographer Alexa Wilson in the studio for the last six weeks making a new full-length work on the company. The Status of Being opens at Tempo Dance Festival in October before touring the North Island
Alexa Wilson is a New Zealand artist who has been based in Berlin for the last three years, and has presented twenty-five performance and video works in New Zealand, Europe, Australia and NYC. She has danced for New Zealand choreographers including Douglas Wright, Lisa Densem and Malia Johnston, and created works on Touch Compass, Rifleman Productions and Unitec School of Performing and Screen Arts as a guest choreographer. She has a BA in Women’s Studies and Film Studies, an MA in Film Production from The University of Auckland majoring in Screenwriting, and a BPSA in Dance from Unitec SPASA. She has taught at New Zealand institutions in Film Theory and Interdisciplinary Performance (Auckland University, Unitec, MIT).
Alexa received a Goethe Institute Scholarship to study in Berlin and a Turbo residency with Anna Macrae at Impulstanz Vienna 2009. She has accolades in New Zealand which include Magic Box (Best Emerging New Zealand choreographer/NZ Listener 2004), Toxic White Elephant Shock (Creative New Zealand/Tup Lang Award 2009), and Weg: A-Way (four Auckland Fringe Awards including Auckland Arts Festival Award 2011).
In 2012 Alexa performed Star/Oracle of Delphi at Leonhardhi Kulturprojeckt Frankfurt, CPR NYC, Ada Studio, and Reh Kunst Gallery/Brooklyn’s This Red Door, and then in 2013 at G30 Gallery Berlin, 100 Grad Berlin Festival at Sophiensaele, Volksroom Brussels, Poznan Design Festival Poland, Art Space Gallery Auckland, and in 2014 is presenting at Tempo Dance Festival and Body Festival/Physics Room.
In 2012 she also collaborated on a satire Show Pony with actress Nisha Madhan for the New Performance Festival, curated by Stephen Bain at Auckland’s Aotea Centre. The same year she worked with 1980s performance artist Linda Montano in NYC, and completed a PG Dip Fine Art with Transart in Berlin/NYC.
In 2013 Alexa performed in Hamburg for Aktionen/Attraktionen with Geheimagentur/ Random House (a collaboration with Mark Harvey), presented Extraordinary Aliens at AUSUFERN Berlin festival and Month of Performance Art Berlin, and Berlin Bedroom Dance was selected to screen on an ABC/Disney TV Series in America.
In 2014 she is doing a Red Gate Residency in Beijing to complete the video version of Extraordinary Aliens, and Footnote New Zealand Dance are thrilled to have her in New Zealand and making the new full length work The Status of Being on the company.