Lois Alexander is a Berlin and Amsterdam based choreographer, dancer, researcher, and Pilates teacher.
Moving between dance, film, and text, Lois creates embodied worlds that explore how we exist otherwise, in relation, and in resistance. Her movement research focuses on re-mapping the body through nonlinear forms of knowledge, drawing on diasporic memory to invoke (im)possibilities of return.
Lois Alexander’s choreographies take on a process-oriented approach, unfolding hybrid practices that are interacting across forms. She often works with organic materials to bridge inner and outer worlds, creating a sense of porosity. These materials activate specific qualities of motion and generate affect, interfacing with the nonhuman and shifting perception toward what is otherwise unseen.
From these temporalities, her central questions emerge. Her research asks how gaze, spectacle, and normative theatrics of dance shape what a body is, and what it is allowed to be. She also investigates how performance can transform refusal into a methodology of presence, one that protects autonomy, affirms sovereignty, and still makes space for shared, relational, and ecological ways of being together.
Lois Alexander’s teaching practice spans contemporary dance, somatics and Pilates, and is an extension of her central research questions about bodily autonomy. She supports making movement accessible in classes, workshop settings, and movement research labs. Her movement research labs share the choreographic tools that she draws on in her own creative practice. With her Pilates work, Lois has a passion for supporting those living with chronic pain and working with a nervous system attuned approach to re-build safety in the body through movement with her students.
Her choreographic debut, Neptune, supported by Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, premiered at Tanztage Berlin and Dansmakers Amsterdam in 2020. Lois joined the Aerowaves Twenty21 cohort with Neptune, presenting internationally at festivals such as Julidans, Kilowatt, and b.Motion. In 2022, she created Yeye, supported by the Berlin Senate for Culture and co-produced by Sophiensaele Berlin. Yeye premiered in 2022 and was later presented at Move! Festival in Krefeld. In 2023, Ballhaus Naunynstraße commissioned Lois Alexander to create Eventually Causing the Shake as part of the series Wie ich werde, ich will sein.
Alongside these large-scale works, Lois has developed shorter research based pieces including Waves (2023), Bodies of Water (2023), and Black Venus (2021), created through various intercultural exchanges, residencies, and commissions.
In 2020, Lois was awarded the 3Package Deal from AFK, and was a Young Arts Amsterdam Support recipient. Lois has held residencies at Dansmakers Amsterdam, Djerassi Resident Artists Program California, Rote Fabrik Zürich, Lake Studios Berlin, and ada Studios Berlin.
Lois is a graduate of The Juilliard School with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance.
