Alessandra Williams, PhD, is a dancer, scholar, and intergenerational healing facilitator. Her academic interests include dance and performance, and race, gender, sexuality, and transnationalism. Her fellowships include the Early Career Faculty Fellowship with the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice (2023-4) and the Inclusive Excellence Fellowship with the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater (2018–19). As Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellow, Williams earned a Ph.D. and M.A. in Culture and Performance at UCLA and through the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, finished the B.A. with honors in American Studies and Dance at Macalester College. Originally from Minneapolis, Williams’ work as a community organizer led to receiving the 2010 Minnesota Grassroots Solutions Organizer of the Year Award.
Having joined the Minneapolis-based Ananya Dance Theatre to be immersed in the company’s Yorchhā technique in 2006, Williams has performed in Dastak and Altars of Our Sacred Geometries (2021), Sutrajāl (2019), Shaatranga (2018), Shyamali (2017), Horidraa (2016), Roktim (2015), Moreechika (2012), Ashesh Barsha (2009), and Pipaashaa (2007). Alongside Ananya Chatterjea and Hui Wilcox, Williams is co-editor of the anthology Dancing Transnational Feminisms: Ananya Dance Theatre and the Art of Social Justice.
Furthermore, her solo-authored book project “Bittersweet” identifies artistic and historical foundations for queer black dance based on the choreographies and dance-films of David Roussève and the REALITY dance company. Her writings can also be found in Dance Research Journal, TDR, and Dance Teacher Online.
As grant-writer and residency-organizer, she establishes public platforms for interdisciplinary artists to present their work, as demonstrated by her initiative as a grant recipient with the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice to present choreographer David Roussève and the REALITY dance company at Rutgers University in a 2023 series of master classes, student and faculty dialogues, and an evening/live-streamed event under the frame of “queer black dance.”
Pedagogy and social justice are at the forefront of her practice as an educator, as she has been awarded funding to immerse dance students in the role of the arts in community engagement, such as her 2021 work with the “Shelter” project of Co-Lab Arts on the oral histories of unhoused persons in New Brunswick.
And as a senior Yorchhā educator, vinyasa yoga instructor, and Africanist aesthetic practitioner, she facilitates healing workshops on movement, vocal-work, and intergenerational memory.