Alexandra Barbier

Bio

Alexandra Barbier is a multidimensional artist and storyteller whose works are often whimsical and humorous while also inspiring social/cultural commentary and inquiry. She blends practices from dance, theatre, visual art, and creative writing together to tell stories of Blackness, queerness, Southern-ness, and the millennial generation.

Alexandra is originally from Louisiana, where she was a member of the Baton Rouge-based contemporary dance company Of Moving Colors Productions for eight seasons, taught dance at various studios and Pre-K – 12 schools, and performed with Theatre Baton Rouge (formerly known as Baton Rouge Little Theatre) where she played “Liz/Pop” in their production of Chicago, among other musical theatre roles. For several years, she was heavily involved in the Salt Lake City arts community where she received her MFA from the University of Utah and afterwards held the Raymond C. Morales teaching fellowship in their School of Dance, served as an organizer for Queer Spectra Arts Festival, and briefly worked as the Salt Lake City Public Art Program assistant. Additionally, she spent one academic year in Nantes, France, as an English Language teacher through the Teaching Assistant Program In France (TAPIF) and has previously been on faculty for the Joffrey Ballet and Jazz + Contemporary Trainee Programs (NYC) and Joffrey South’s summer intensive (Athens, Ga).

Alexandra’s performance works have been presented in New York through Movement Research at the Judson Church; in Utah at the Marriott Center for Dance (University of Utah), Salt Lake Performance Art Festival, The Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival, West Main Studio(formerly Commonwealth Studios), Red Butte Garden, 12 Minutes Max at the City Library, and loveDANCEmore’s Sunday Series; in Louisiana at the Shaw Center for the Arts’ Manship Theatre and the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge’s Shell Gallery; in Ohio for University of Akron’s Rethinking Race Symposium; and in Illinois at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) and the Virginia Theatre. She has presented research, lecture-demonstrations, and papers at the International Association of Blacks in Dance conference, Collegium for African Diaspora Dance, and Popular Culture Association conference. Her visual art has been exhibited through the Champaign Urbana BIPOC Artist Collective’s exhibit for the 2024 Boneyard Arts Festival.

In 2022, Alexandra was selected as NCCAkron’s Community Commissioning Residency Artist, where she began developing her current project, Stations of Black Loss – an autoethnographic body of work that documents her journey of embracing Black identity. She has continued to develop this work as an Assistant Professor in Dance at Illinois.