April 3, 2019

ADT's Alessandra Williams joining Rutgers' dance faculty

Dr. Alessandra Williams, dance artist-scholar-educator, has accepted an appointment as Assistant Professor in the Dance Department, Mason Gross School of the Arts, at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. 

Dr. Williams is a dancer and scholar whose academic interests include dance and performance studies, Asian and African American culture, transnational feminism, queer of color theory, and comparative studies of race and ethnicity. Having joined the Minneapolis-based Ananya Dance Theatre to train in the company’s Yorchhā technique in 2006, she has performed in seven productions: Pipaashaa: Extreme Thirst (2007), Ashesh Barsha: Unending Monsoon (2009), Moreechika: Season of Mirage (2012), Roktim: Nurture Incarnadine (2015), Horidraa: Golden Healing (2016), Shyamali: Sprouting Words (2017), and Shaatranga: Women Weaving Worlds (2018).

Dr. Williams recently worked alongside artistic director Dr. Ananya Chatterjea and founding company member Dr. Hui Wilcox to submit their book manuscript Meditation on Dream, an anthology of poetic and scholarly essays on the relationship between choreography and race, gender, sexuality, and diaspora and indigenous frameworks. In other publications, she has theorized the choreography of David Roussève/REALITY dance company as a form of decolonizing alliances in Talking Black Dance Inside Out/Outside In, edited by Takiyah Nur Amin and Thomas DeFrantz (Conversation Across the Field of Dance Series XXXVI).

As Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellow, Dr. Williams earned a Ph.D. and M.A. in Culture and Performance at UCLA. Through the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, she finished her B.A. with honors in American Studies and Dance at Macalester College. From 2018-2019, she served as Inclusive Excellence Fellow in Women’s and Gender Studies and Theatre and Dance at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where she choreographed two original pieces for the spring dance concert, and also served on committees supporting diversity and inclusion efforts. From 2016-7, she taught as Visiting Assistant Professor in the dance program of Carleton College.