Dance artistry
Body is where I sense. Body is where I feel. Where I notice, where I inquire, where I remember, where I move. Body is where I agitate. Body is where we communicate. And Body is who I am.
For Alexia, Body is a decolonizing, alive concept that exists at the intersections of (1) our historical, political, cultural, and social memories, experiences, and futures, (2) our thinking, feeling, sensing, and perceiving, and (3) the lived embodiment of our interconnected physicality. Dance is a home, a place, a space, a lineage of and for Bodies, where Alexia practices embodied inquiries, questions, and investigations. An active dance artist and somatic practitioner, Alexia is drawn to movement forms and experiences that support the embodiment of lineage, improvisation, relationality, and deep sensing.
She maintains her artistic training and practice primarily across Central and Southern Vermont, where she explores durational movements and shake, authentic movement, moving from sensing, contact improvisation, and the reclamation of heritage dances. And Alexia explores dance methods of inquiry and research in her work as an arts-based educational researcher.
This page showcases Alexia's professional performance and choreographic works from 2012-2023.
Photo by Rosa Allegra Wolff, Dancers are Lilianna Kane and Alexia Buono, Location is The Field Center.
Shǒusāng 守丧; keeping watch.
SCREEN DANCE AND MEDIA INSTALLATION PERFORMANCE
The piece explores "Shousang as a mourning period, an exploration of rites and rituals of loss...something lost, eternal and, in time, released."
Art League of Ocean City, May 5 2023, Ocean City, Maryland, US
Exhibit: Gather
Curator: Jinchul Kim
The new exhibition, featured in the Thaler Gallery, celebrated Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month and featured 16 contemporary Asian American artists.
Choreographer, Cinematographer, Media Installation Artist: Jen Leung Johnson
Dancer: Alexia Buono
voice: Carrie Leung
music: Jesse Ahmann, Rachel Bower Karrflowers: Masterpiece Flower Farm
special thanks: Lawrence Chan, Mary Avara, Assateague Island National Seashore, Jinchul Kim, Art League of Ocean City
Improvising Home
PERFORMANCE
February 24 2023, Studio 34, Philadelphia, PA
How do we recognize what we consider home?
Can improvisation allow us to travel far from home and then help us to find our way back?
“A moment of improvisation is informed by every moment that came before it. A tree follows the movement of the Sun across the sky. Each day, twisting and arcing from under shadows of canopy. A sapling’s growth is collaboration, of trees, water, soil, and sun, each converging upon its delicate, skyward pathway.” — Kayliani Sood
Dancer/choreographer: Jungwoong Kim
Collaboratory dancers: Alexia Buono, Ashmina Chremos, Germain Ingram, Jorgie Ingram, Kaijo Caggins, Kayliani Sood, Sol Cort, Anya Smolnikova.
This hour-long performance featured live music by Tim Motzer and sculpture by Andy Davis.
Here is a review of the performance, written by Lu Donovan
THE ART OF WALKING
Alexia was a performance artist in The Art of Walking at Artpark in Lewiston, NY during summer 2020. She and fellow performer Michael Wells lead socially distanced groups of headphone-wearing audience members through a moving meditation combining walking, stillness, listening and site-specific performance. Art of Walking was created through an international collaboration between New York-based theatre and visual artist Carin Jean White and artists Itsaso Iribarren & Germán de la Riva from Spain.
Photographer: Cynthia Pegado
Body (In)tention
Choreographed by Alexia Buono and dancers at New Dancers Showcase, SUNY Brockport, Fall 2019
Alexia received a mini grant to fund collaborative undergraduate research on the topic of bodily restorative justice. She worked with a trio of undergraduate student dancers to collaboratively research this concept through somatic practice, dancer-generated movement, spoken word, and the visual arts as inspired by creative arts therapies. The dance students were deeply embedded in somatic modes of inquiry into their own bodily identities and creative processes. Rehearsals and choreography utilized the embodied experiences of the dancers as material, as they explored their conceptions and identity as/with Body through reflective and creative visual arts, dance, and costuming. The conceptions of Body generated by the dancers were explored somatically, improvisationally, and eventually performed in relation to their Body-mapped costumes, their inner experiences, and their relationships with one another.
Why be a woman? Phase III
Concert Dance Performed at Dances at MUCCC, Rochester, NY, 201
Choreographer: Center Dance
balancing act
As a company member of Anne Burnidge Dance, Alexia was involved in a two and a half year, large scale, grant-funded research project on the human microbiome with the University at Buffalo’s Genome, Environment, and Microbiome Community of Excellence. She held the roles of educational specialist and dancer.
The community-engagement part of this project resulted in STEAM workshops for elementary students at the Buffalo Science Museum, along with performance showcases at multiple sites. Balancing Act was an interactive, multimedia performance project based on the human microbiome that took place at the local science museum and at the University at Buffalo. The goal of the interdisciplinary project was to use dance and embodied research to investigate and illuminate scientific findings related to the ways in which microorganisms that live on and in the human body affect our health, mood, relationships, community structures, and participation in our personal, environmental, and global ecosystems. All company members involved in the project were performer-collaborators and actively participated in the creation of the performance work.
Choreography: Anne Burnidge Dance
Installation: Carlie Todoro-Rickus
Location: Buffalo Museum of Science
Photographer Paul Hokanson
https://www.buffalo.edu/genomeenvironmentmicrobiome/outreach/dance-and-the-microbiome.html
Written and Directed by Dan Shanahan and Melissa Meola | PART OF THE RESPONSE PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL (2018)
Torn Space Theatre
Site Specific, Immersive, Multi-media Performance Art at Silo City, Buffalo, NY
Station: BLISS
Bliss is performed by a ritual that extracts bliss.
Installation: Frank Napolski
Choreography: Alexia Buono
VIDEO BY FLATSITTER: https://www.facebook.com/tornspacetheater/videos/169337683951228/
Photos by Jim Bush, Michael Williams Thomas, and @BuffaloNY
February 16 -March 11, 2018
At the Adam Mickiewicz Library and Dramatic Circle
612 Fillmore Avenue, Buffalo NY 14212
Torn Space Theatre
Multi-media Performance Art
Playwright: Caryl Churchill
Director: Dan Shanahan
Choreography: Alexia Buono
It's Just a Phase
Concert Dance Performed at the Undoing Balance Fundraiser, 2018
Choreographer: Anne Burnidge
Photographer: Jessica Brant
Location: The Alt Theatre
Written and Directed by Dan Shanahan and Melissa Meola | PART OF THE RESPONSE PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL (2017)
Torn Space Theatre
Site Specific, Immersive, Multi-media Performance Art at Silo City, Buffalo, NY
Choreography: Alexia Buono
The Gathering explored a community's enactment of annual rituals and ceremonies. Choreography, costuming, and performance for the community in The Gathering explored themes of cultural appropriation, commercialization, authoritarian surveillance, the intersections of race, religion, pop culture and gender, and acts of resistance from a collective history.
Photos by Jim Bush, Michael Williams Thomas, and @BuffaloNY
An Arts-Based Educational Research Performative Inquiry (2017)
Dissertation
Choreography & Performance: Alexia Buono
I Feel My Heart was a performative inquiry of Alexia's dissertation research of preschoolers' embodied experiences with a mindfully somatic pedagogy in the mindful movement classes she taught. This was the performance aspect of her dissertation defense, and included immersive participation from the audience.
Location: University at Buffalo
Photographer: Barry Soo
Concert Dance (2017)
Choreography: Elyssa Bourke
Dancers: Alexia Buono & Monica Karwan
Location: The Alt Theatre, Buffalo, NY, (Un)Doing Balance
Photographer: Jim Bush
Written and Directed by Dan Shanahan and Melissa Meola | PART OF THE RESPONSE PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL (2016)
August 18-21
Silo City
20 Childs Street (now Silo City Way), Buffalo, NY
Torn Space Theatre
Site Specific, Immersive, Multi-media Performance Art
Choreography: Alexia Buono
Burden was designed for Marine A, a vast grain elevator with 120ft tall interconnecting concrete silos, as well as the SS Columbia – a National Historic Landmark – the last surviving passenger ship of its kind. Choreography explored themes of sympathy and Burden.
Photos by Michael Williams Thomas
the shipment
Written by Young Jean Lee | Directed by Dan Shanahan (2016)
February 19 – March 13
At the Adam Mickiewicz Library and Dramatic Circle
612 Fillmore Avenue, Buffalo NY 14212
Choreography : Alexia Buono
Choreography explored minstrelsy, Black stereotypes, and racial disparities.
https://www.tornspacetheater.com/home/past-productions/the-shipment/
Contact Improvisation
Mission Improvable: Fluid Bodies, Wasteland Studios, Buffalo, NY, 2016
Choreography & Performers: Alexia Buono & James Litz
Photographer: Jim Bush
Written and Directed by Dan Shanahan and Melissa Meola (2015)
Torn Space Theatre
Site Specific, Immersive, Multi-media Performance Art, Silo City, Buffalo, NY
In 2019, They Kill Things was selected to represent the US at the Prague Quadrennial, Prague, Czech Republic
Choreography: Alexia Buono
Choreography for They Kill Things was designed to depict a secluded society celebrating the summer harvest, exploring themes of industry, death, rebirth, killing and conception.
Photos by Flatsitter & Michael Williams Thomas
Site Specific Performance, The Allen Street Dress Shop, Buffalo, NY
Choreography: Melanie Aceto (2014)
Photography by Paul Hokanson/ licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Written and Directed by Dan Shanahan (2014)
Torn Space Theatre
Site Specific, Immersive, Multi-media Performance Art, Silo City, Buffalo, NY
Choreography for Pep Rally Cheerleaders: Alexia Buono
Choreography for Pep Rally Cheerleaders was designed to explore early stages of human psychosocial development.
Photos by Michael Williams Thomas
Concert Dance, Dancers Workshop (2013)
Choreography: Alexia Buono
Blackbox Theatre, University at Buffalo
HIDDEN BLESSING
Concert Dance, Dancers Workshop (2012)
Choreography: Alexia Buono
Blackbox Theatre, University at Buffalo