Headshot photo credit: Jill Goldman Photography
Headshot photo credit: Jill Goldman PhotographyDance Lab Resident 2025–2026
Melissa Alexis choreographs to make the inherent therapeutic properties of movement visible, and project on stages our collective healing and liberation. A first generation Trinidadian immigrant, her movement is rooted in the intersections of African and Western perspectives, as well as spiritual embodiment, sustainability, yoga, mindfulness, and consciousness studies.
Her Afro-fusion modern dance works have been presented as part of Brooklyn-based The Creators Collective, and at Boston Center for the Arts, Sarah Lawrence College, Tufts University, The Dance Complex, Green Street Studios, Smith College Department of Theatre, Wheelock College, among others. As a ritual healing practice, her performances have engaged many public and historic spaces, among them, Arlington Street Church, Myrtle Baptist Church, and the Museum of Fine Arts. She earned a Master of Fine Arts in Dance from Sarah Lawrence College. When not presenting dance, she facilitates cross-sector applications of creativity and mindfulness and serves as a workplace communication and relational intelligence consultant and coach to leaders, communities, and organizations.
Melissa Alexis invites you to a movement workshop exploring topics of healing and evolution that will inform her newest work The Promised Land.
This workshop is free and open to participants ages 12+. No dance background necessary! Her new dance piece, The Promised Land is in development at Boston Center for the Arts this year as part of her Dance Lab Residency. Throughout the summer, Melissa and three additional dancers have been rehearsing outdoors in the elements and improvising processes that inform the piece. Come play with the big questions outlined below in a movement workshop where Melissa will share choreography + structured improvisations, providing opportunity for form and flow.
October 25 | 6:30–8:30 PM
2025–2026
Dance Lab
Project Statement
THE PROMISED LAND
Every piece I choreograph is a piece of the puzzle in my own healing journey, which also mirrors the larger collective journey to heal the wounds of the past in order to move forward. The Promised Land mirrors the transcendence stage of healing, where something new is created once the actions and re-actions from the past are integrated. This is where I believe some of us already are in this time of a paradigm shift, when old paradigms of self-concept, global concept, and concepts of power are rising to our collective consciousness in jarring ways in order to be healed. This is not without the experience of pain and suffering for many, especially people who have been historically marginalized. I plan to rework and further develop this piece as a way to process how this time is landing with each dancer individually, and how we come together as a collective body to co-create anew. My process involves movement research with 4 dancers of African diasporic lineage and diverse community members — including community participatory workshops — as well as research around consciousness, quantum physics, and sacred geometry, elements which will anchor the concepts I started working with in the piece but that need to come through more strongly and be amplified by different voices, bodies, backgrounds, and experiences.
Concepts and research questions include:
- Moving from duality to divine or unity consciousness
- Moving through darkness and light
- Extending the body to experience awareness of interbeing with each other and natural environment
- Body as intelligence receiver and transmitter
- Collective body as sacred
- Resonance
- Digital/AI integration and projection as experimentation with the question of how AI will impact humanity in the future; how can dancers interact with AI in real-time and what effect does this have on our capacity?