Featured Artist : Alexandra Elliott

Alex in action : a still from Overland

If you've read any of these posts or ever looked into the Freed the Puppet project at all, you'll recognize the name and face of the amazing woman who is this Spring's featured artist. Alexandra Elliott's tireless efforts with Freed have made the project what it is today, and I feel privileged to have the opportunity to work with this extremely talented dancer and choreographer. Alex and I began our collaboration in Winnipeg in 2006, at the very first Freed jam/photo shoot. She has been the face of, and usually the body behind the project since then, making time for shoots, rehearsals, meetings, travel, and performances all while maintaining her career as a Winnipeg based independent artist extraordinaire.

When Alex had to stop dancing professionally due to a knee injury, she continued to collaborate with Freed by modeling for photo shoots to generate video material, and consulting on the movement aspect of the project. In February 2010, and despite the bone chip that plagued her for three years, she flew out to Montreal to star in Overland, Freed's first foray into contemporary dance cinema. Alex finally received knee surgery in the summer of 2010 and spent the rest of the year healing and training. Last October she starred in the upcoming Jamusement.net production Off the Rails, a webseries exploring a character's experience with schizophrenia. Not a dance project, but movement based nonetheless, Off the Rails is scheduled for completion in September 2011.

In 2011, fully recovered from surgery, Alex exploded back onto the Winnipeg scene. She received a creation grant to remount one duet and choreograph another which she realized in January, and I was lucky enough to get to document her new work when the process was complete. In February, she choreographed a 20 minute work entitled Intima Punal (Intimate Dagger) with collaborator Renee Vandale for the Young Lungs Dance Exchange's annual review No Idling (February 11 and 12), and was engaged to choreograph former RWB performer Cindy Marie Small in a run of The Big Gravel Sifter for the StrindbergFest theatre festival, a performance that Uptown Magazine called "beautiful, beguiling". In March we were lucky enough to have Alex back with Freed the Puppet, working on the video material and choreography for the project's new performance and installation piece Fragmented/Fused. Currently, Alex is in rehearsals for a way in, a dance/theatre work by Natasha Torres-Garner, and I am looking forward to getting to Winnipeg in time to see Alex's on-stage comeback at the end of this month! In May, she will begin working again with Rennee Vandale on a show for 6 dancers (of which she's one) exploring the essence of tango. Renee and Alex will mount this new piece for Winnipeg's Fringe Festival, which runs July 13-24. With all that accomplished and on the go, you can see why I chose Alex to be our featured artist this Spring, and why 2011 is shaping up to be her year!