Community Class with Alex Ketley

ABOUT ALEX KETLEY'S "HOT MESS" COMMUNITY CLASS

Over the years, Ketley has flourished as director of The Foundry (a multimedia dance company based in San Francisco), taught theater and performance studies at Stanford University, and created his own technique titled “Hot Mess” that he taught at San Francisco Conservatory of Dance (where was resident choreographer) along with other standard ballet and choreography classes. Ketley describes his Hot Mess classes as ridiculous movements performed in a cycle that becomes increasingly more extreme with each set. For example, he might ask dancers to turn yoga poses into a silly hip-hop dance while singing a romantic song in a made-up language while making terrible faces. “No one can accomplish these prompts in a good way,” Ketley says. “They scramble the body a bit and allow me to use failure as a creative tool. It challenges our notions of beauty."

ABOUT CARMEL DANCE FESTIVAL'S FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM

This 10-day immersion is designed to provide dancers and choreographers with a transformational in-person experience in a safe and productive environment. Throughout the fellowship, dancers will work closely with guest mentor Alex Ketley, Artistic Director Lillian Barbeito, and Ballare Carmel company members on Countertechnique, progressive ballet, partnering, movement generation, repertory, composition, and performance skills. It is an ideal opportunity for dancers to enhance skills while experiencing Ballare Carmel's working atmosphere, plus be considered for future employment. Choreographers will be given time, space, dancers, and feedback sessions to create or revisit their work. The experience will culminate in a public performance and reception at Hidden Valley Music Seminars' rustic and beloved theater in the heart of stunning Carmel Valley Village. 

ABOUT BALLARE CARMEL   

Ballare Carmel is the resident company of the Carmel Dance Festival. It was founded in 2021 by Artistic Director Lillian Barbeito (a graduate of The Juilliard School who founded BODYTRAFFIC and HAVEN Global Sanctuary for Dance) to tell Monterey County stories, myths, and bold feats, through world-class dance. The project-based ensemble's repertoire by established and emerging choreographers includes works by Jennifer Archibald, Noelle Kayser, James Gregg, Ihsan Rustem, and Skye Schmidt. @ballarecarmel

ALEX KETLEY (Filmmaker, Choreographer, Stanford Professor, & Guggenheim Fellow)

is an independent choreographer, filmmaker, and Director of The Foundry. Formally a classical dancer with the San Francisco Ballet, he left the company to create The Foundry as a platform to explore his interests in alternative methods of devising performance. The company has allowed Ketley the freedom to pursue projects that would be difficult to realize within his commissioning career. A few examples of these are; Syntax, an hour-long duet systemically using the mechanics of language as an organizing mechanism, Lost Line researched how the application of environment effects the generation of movement and studied in direct response to California’s diverse physical landscapes, Please Love Me jettisoned the structure of performing in a theater context and was developed with a curiosity about how people genuinely connect and experience artwork, and the No Hero Trilogy which was a multi-year project that explored what dance and performance means to the lives of people living throughout rural America.

For his independent work as a choreographer he has been commissioned extensively throughout the United States and has received acknowledgment from the Hubbard Street National Choreographic Competition, the International Choreographic Competition of the Festival des Arts de Saint-Saveaur, the Choo-San Goh Award, the Princess Grace Award for Choreography, four Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography Residencies, the Gerbode-Hewlett Choreographer Award, the Eben Demarest Award, the National Choreographic Initiative Residency, a Kenneth Rainin Foundation New and Experimental Works Grant, three CHIME Fellowships, the Artistry Award from the Superfest International Disability Film Festival, and his work was featured on national television through an invitation from the show So You Think You Can Dance. His pieces and collaborations have also been awarded Isadora Duncan Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the categories of; Ensemble, Choreography, as well as Full Company, and nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Visual Design.

As an educator, he has taught throughout the world and is currently a Lecturer at Stanford University’s Theater and Performance Studies Department and was the founding Resident Choreographer at the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance for 14 years until its closure in 2018.

In 2020 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, one of the most prestigious honors in the United States recognizing individuals "who have demonstrated exceptional creative ability in the arts.”