Alexandrina Helmsley
Alexandrina Hemsley’s creative practice lands in the fluid spaces of dance, choreography, writing, facilitating and advocacy. Their interests are both enduring and in expansive states of flux – or just in connection/relation to the processes within life and within living. They turn towards the sensorial, the bodily, the multiple subjective positions of self – and self in intimate relation to self and other selves – as ways to find breath and voice amidst the unjust and inequitable.
They work with intricate improvisation scores and vivid performance environments which insist on conjuring embodied enquiries into a multiplicity of voices. This includes work within organisations around anti-racism, anti-ableism and embodied advocacy. It is a life long, nuanced undertaking.
Alexandrina is currently embarking on a slow-burn interdisciplinary solo project Words Collect In my Mouth; All is Fire and Flood which attends to questions of how, one (individual & communities) returns to intimacy – of self, of performing, of expression – within the aftermaths of (continual) violence? The research situates itself across and does not distinguish aesthetic value between dance, writing, film, healthcare and community work.
Alexandrina is Associate Artist at Cambridge Junction and International Associate Artist 2020/21 at Dance Ireland. Alexandrina is a current recipient of Vision Mixers funds, awarded to lead a two-year producer development programme, working with BIPOC dance producers on formalising anti-ableist and anti-racist advocacy through dance production.
Her collaborations include Project O with Jamila Johnson-Small (2010 onwards, Sadlers Wells New Wave Associates) and Seke Chimutengwende (2016 onwards) on Black Holes. She collaborated with Rosie Heafford and Helena Webb on Dad Dancing.
Her work has been commissioned by and presented at Sadler’s Wells, Battersea Arts Centre, Southbank Centre, Cambridge Junction, MDI, South East Dance, Chisenhale Dance Space and The Yard Theatre amongst others. Her critical writing has been published by Sick of The Fringe, an introduction into Selina Thompson’s Salt (Faber & Faber), SPILL Festival and new publication exploring queering the future, Hereafter (Unbound). Other publishing includes The Silver Bandage (Bookworks) and LADA’s Live Art Almanac Vol. 5. She has an essay in upcoming publication, Performance, Dance and Political Economy, Eds. Katerina Paramana and Anita Gonzalez (Bloomsbury Press).
