Alex Ketley is an independent choreographer, filmmaker, and the director of The Foundry. Formerly a classical dancer with the San Francisco Ballet and LINES Ballet, he left dancing professionally 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 affects 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; 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, and Distal Imprint was a film created in collaboration with artist and Death-Row inmate Bill Clark. The Foundry’s diverse work has been enthusiastically received by audiences, the press, and funders.

For his independent work as a choreographer he has been commissioned extensively throughout the United States, as well as projects in Germany and Italy, and has received acknowledgement 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; Choreography, Company, and Ensemble, as well as nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Visual Design. In 2020 he became a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, one of the most prestigious honors in the United States recognizing “individuals who have demonstrated exceptional creative ability in the arts”.

As an educator he has taught extensively throughout the country and currently holds the position of Advanced Lecturer at Stanford University’s Theater and Performance Studies Department. He was the founding Resident Choreographer at the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance for fourteen years until its closure in 2018.

Since 2020 he has been collaborating with his friend Bill Clark who is a prolific artist and writer currently incarcerated on Death Row at San Quentin State Prison. They teach a class together at Stanford University called DanceAcution: Performance Practice, Death Row, and the Evolution of Cultural Reform. The class uses Bill’s vast experience as an artist and incarcerated individual as the platform for the student’s to develop new performance work. Bill is also collaborating with The Foundry on a new evening length work titled An Approximation of Resilience set to premiere in in 2024.

In addition to his artistic projects Alex has a daughter, Amara, who each day inspires him to see and experience the world from her unique vantage point. His wife Aline is a dancer and an integral collaborator in all of The Foundry’s projects created this decade. He is also on the Board of Directors of Death Penalty Focus, an organization whose work focuses on abolishing both the death penalty and LWOP (Life Without Parole).

For more about Death Penalty Focus visit: https://deathpenalty.org

To see work visit: Vimeo

Awards

Voted to the Board of Directors of Death Penalty Focus - 2023

Fellow - John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation - 2020

Artistry Award from the Superfest International Disability Film Festival
The Gift (of Impermanence), dance film - 2015

Princess Grace Foundation Choreography Mentorship Co-Commission Award (CMCC)
2013

MANCC Media Fellowship
2013

Kenneth Rainin Foundation New and Experimental Works Grant
2013

Isadora Duncan Award Nomination for Outstanding Achievement in Visual Design
Ketley’s No Hero video projection - 2012

National Eben Demarest Award
2012

Isadora Duncan Awards (4)
Oustanding Achievement by an Ensemble 2009
Oustanding Achievement in Choreography 2011
Outstanding Achievement by a Company 2011 & 2012

Gerbode-Hewlett Choreographer Commissioning Award
2009

CHIME Fellowships (3)
2007, 2008 & 2009

BNC National Choreographic Competition
2008

Inaugural Princess Grace Award for Choreography
2005

National Choo-San Goh Award
2005

Wattis Foundation Grant
2004

International Choreographic Competition of the Festival Des Arts De Saint-Saveaur
2004

Hubbard Street National Choreographic Competition
2001

Dance Magazine 20 To Watch
2000

Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography Fellowships (4)
2007, 2009, 2014 & 2015

Residencies

2023-24

Stapleton Ballet Company in Residence

2020

The HAVEN

2019

Perry Mansfield Company Residency

The National Choreography Initiative Residency

2004-2018

Resident Choreographer, SF Conservatory of Dance

2014

Vermont Performance Lab

2007

Ucross Foundation

2001 & 2007

Headlands Center for the Arts

2003, 2006 & 2017

ODC Theater, San Francisco

2004 & 2006

Santa Fe Art Institute

2005

Taipei Artist Village

2003

The Yard

2002

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

2007, 2009, 2014, 2015

Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC)

Commissions
& FOUNDRY PROJECTS

2024

An Approximation of Resilience

2023

The Bonds that Bind Us (With Bill Clark)

2022

Still Witness (Ongoing Project for The Foundry)

Dark Light for LINES Advanced Training Program

2020

Distal Imprint (Film)

2019

RANGE The Foundry

Unanticipated History (Draft 1) The National Choreographic Institute

La Hantise LINES Ballet Training Program

I Will Burn Your House Down CocoDaco Dance Project Chicago

2018

C’est la Fin: Vrai Cœur
SF Conservatory of Dance (Final Work)

FAIL/FAIL (ecstatic discernment)
Stanford University

C(r)O(e)N(o)S(r)T(i)R(e)U(n)C(t)T
Westside Dance Los Angeles

I Am You, Fully and Truly
Men In Dance Festival, Seattle

Ballast (Particulate Rage, Love & Recovery)
University of South Florida

10to9x11
University of Indiana

Bio(Graphic) Solo
Created for Mercedes Mize, New York

2017

Deep South (No Hero Part 3)
The Foundry

2016

Twisted 2
Ballet Met, Symphony, & Opera

Stillard Mave
Salt Dance Company

2015

In Defense of Regret
AXIS Dance Company in collaboration with Bobbi Jene Smith & Maurya Kerr

The River
New Dialect, Nashville, TN

POEM
The Foundry

2014

Arena
Ballet Leipzig

Swan Lake: Recalibrated
Stanford University

The Gift of Impermanence
Dance film
AXIS Dance Company

Vermont (No Hero Part 2)
The Foundry at Vermont Performance Lab

2013

The Span
California State University Long Beach

Ciao' 
Spellbound Junior Ensemble, Rome, Italy

Midnight Drifter
Florida State University

2012

Five Objects (in Isolation & Solitude)
NYU Tisch School of Dance

No Hero Part 1 - The West
The Foundry

Low Down
The Foundry with LEVYDance

2011

The Radiant Ocean (of Proud Vanishing Beauty)
The Juilliard School

Happiness
BNC Colorado

Terra Incognita, Revisited
San Francisco West Wave Festival

Rarities and Oddities
BNC Colorado

New.Base.Line
University of Texas at Austin

Arena
Ballet Leipzig, Germany

To Color Me Different
So You Think You Can Dance (National TV)

2010

Please Love Me
The Foundry
Gerbode Hewlett Choreography Award

Wave Atlas
Arc Dance, Seattle

The Offering
BNC Colorado

2009

Silt
Ballet X

Rauschen 13
BodyTraffic

Kill the Anthem
BNC Colorado

2008

Monument
ODC Theater, CA

For You
Groundworks Dance, OH

Vessel
AXIS Dance Company

If Ever (an Ocean) Relinquished
Dance Works Chicago

Duo
ARC Dance, Seattle

This Act of Three Collisions
BNC Colorado

To Color Me Different
AXIS Dance Company

2007

Imprint
The Foundry w. Christian Burns

ICARUS/RISE
The Translation Project

Drift
Ballet Met

Kyrie
Stanford University

The Cypher Construct
San Francisco State University

2006

Lost Line
The Foundry

The Marking of Apology
Robert Moses KIN

Careless
SFCD Company
West Wave Dance Festival

2005

Second Memory
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago

The Wish for Even Ground
North Carolina School for the Arts

Syntax
The Foundry w. Carol Snow
Funded by Creative Work Fund

Untitled
Taipei Arts Village, Taiwan

2004

Mondriaan
Hubbard Street 2
Festival des Arts de Saint-Sauveur

Trace Fulfillment (Rework)
Reworked for Florida State University

Joygame (Intro)
Headlands Center for the Arts - Moving Pictures Festival

Dallas
The Cowell Theater

2003

Fragments Repeat Forever
Hubbard Street 2

Anticipate Loss
LINES Ballet School

Within Once
The Foundry at The Yard

The Fleshing Memory
The Foundry

2002

Kid Thunder
The Foundry

2001

Trace Fulfillment
Hubbard Street 2

Capacity from Shallowness
The Foundry

2000

Sea Green and Blue Already Rising
Alonzo King's LINES Ballet

Tar@JMB
Marin Civic Auditorium

Yosemite (video)
The Foundry

1999

PaintParkTalk
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Current Form
The Foundry

1998

Salt Flat Pieces
The Foundry

 ...........................

 2004-2018

As Resident Choreographer of the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance Alex Ketley had consistently made between four to six pieces for the advanced students each year. An archive of this work exists at the Conservatory and the school had been an invaluable laboratory for the development of his work.