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Alana Frey is a dancer and dance researcher working across movement improvisation, sounding of the voice, and written forms. 

 

Her performances reflect her devoted practice of tuning the body, mind, and soul to an increased sensitivity to the ephemeral and the mystical, to that which is secret, sacred, and silent.

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Alana holds an MA in Dance Philosophy & History from Roehampton University, London. Her forthcoming PhD research, funded by the UK Arts Humanities Research Council (AHRC) - Techne, (also at Roehampton, commencing Fall 2024), will investigate parallel developments in early modern dance and esotericism at the turn of the twentieth century through mid-century, with an aim of articulating a conception of dance as embodied religious and spiritual experience. 

 

Alana is a (nearly) certified Romana’s Pilates Teacher (Level V). She is rigorously trained in this authentic lineage of Classical Pilates, conveyed directly from Joseph Pilates to his disciple, Romana, who was  entrusted with passing on his movement system and philosophy called Contrology (known today as “Pilates”). This work informs Alana’s practice as a dancer and researcher deeply.

She is co-founder (2016) and emeritus editor of Riting.org, a platform for experiments in writing on performance in Los Angeles.​ Her work has been presented in numerous venues in Los Angeles and the Bay area (2016-2022). She is currently based in London. CONTACT

SOUND & DANCE                               SOUND & DANCE                                SOUND & DANCE

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Society for the Reunification of Sound & Dance (SRSD) is an emergent performing arts endeavor whose object is to re-establish robust and conscious mutuality between sound and movement, with the ideal of assisting in the development of new-legacy idiomatic forms. 

 

SRSD was established in Los Angeles in 2022 by Jamie Green and Alana Frey, who continue to operate it as an ambulatory project within Europe and the U.S.

upcoming:

July 3, 2024 at The Old Church, London

July 15, 2024 at au JUS, Brussels

July 21, 2024 at The Old Hairdresser's, Glasgow

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de cherubim is an often loud, improvisatory dimension, a particular stream of gnosia over which Alana and Jamie arch. it is: Jamie on high-droning fretless guitar, analogue electronics and a rhythm machine, furnishing an elemental ground; and Alana in movement which delivers patiently through the pelvis, eyes, tips of fingers... from all of this, voice spills: spinning tall stories and high screams. the body and its movement are the sine qua non for the sound and its singing.

Frey + Green

Alana: harp & movement & vocals

Jamie: guitar

NOW                                                                  NOW                                                                  NOW

SRSD II

 

The Old Church, London

3 July 2024, 8pm

This evening presents two different approaches to MOVEMENT and SOUND, both with the aim of articulating and elaborating on the vital interdependence of these two oft-tragically separated forms:

 

The respective improvisatory streams of Alana Frey and Jamie Green meet at an estuary of practical gnosis. Jamie ("the musician") and Alana ("the dancer") are concerned with the vertiginous integration of internal-eternal sensing and prosaic-immediate looking, pushing through visible into invisible, grass into sky, by way of SOUND and the danced secret in search of the real. Jamie is wont to proffer high-droning reeds of his own invention and construction, and rhythmic networks to furnish an elemental ground; Alana renders movement which delivers patiently through the pelvis, eyes, tips of fingers... voice sometimes spills. Presenting in a course of phases, this performance first establishes an esoteric vocabulary for the spontaneous transposition of sound-to-dance and vice versa, from which proceeds an exoteric and spirited, if novel, peasant dance.

PAST                                                                  PAST                                                                  PAST

Knees, Schools, Urges

The Box, Los Angeles

June 3 - July 9, 2022

curator: Jennie MaryTai Liu, co curator: Alana Frey 

presented by: Mara McCarthy and The Box, LA

producer: Pieter Performance Space

Developed with a Mike Kelley Foundation Award with additional funds from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs

The project considers dancing, making, envisioning, relating, and survival itself as historical methods. Taking a corporeal and sensual approach to “doing history,” dialogue and educational programs facilitated by dance artists, organizers, and scholars included improvisation, meditation, working within movement scores, and responding to poetic prompts—unearthing possibilities of transformation and deepened relation across bodies and generations. 

SRSD: I

2220 Arts + Archives

April 21, 2022, 7:30pm

 

Eephus

Spring/Summer 2022 Artist-in-Residence, Automata, Los Angeles

End of Residency Performances: March 12 & 13, 7:30pm

Eephus* is a performance of dance, words, sounds, being, and objects which inhabits the space of a baseball field. Since first developed and performed at PAM Residencies in 2019, Eephus has resided in me as a vast notion and reality: an epistemology to be embodied, a ubiquitous ontology to feel through.
 

In its second iteration of performance, Eephus (previously Eephus Pitch) takes the Eephusian Parable as its score. This is a gesticulation of the eephusian body at play in a game I call null-point baseball. Trapped forever in the cavity of game that the Eephus Pitch so readily carves out, I make null the intents, directives, and objectives otherwise inherent to the game we call “baseball.”
 

With destiny & devotion, genius & myth, theater & drama, grass & sky, I: run from first base to second, never leaving or arriving. I: wait on the bench endlessly. I: hit a homerun forever… As I grow near and far to the positions of the game, its passing, and to time itself, I become…

 
Sound artist Jamie Green plays the drawbar organ and bells.
 

*In “real” baseball, an Eephus Pitch is an extremely slow and high arc-ing pitch thrown strategically to “trick” the batter. Disoriented by its lack of speed and direction, the batter either swings at the ball too soon or doesn’t swing at all, believing the pitch to be a big mistake or “blooper.” The lore goes Maurice Van Robays, Pirates Outfielder, coined the term, remarking “Eephus ain’t nuthin’, and that’s a nuthin’ pitch.” “Eephus” from the Hebrew אֶפֶס (efes): “zero” or “nothing.”

 

Flouring

 

the basic premise, Ojai, CA

September 24, 2021, 7:30pm

 

Flouring, an elaboration on Flour (2019), is practices of pelvis and that which dangles below and above it. These exercises address modes of internal-eternal sensing and prosaic-immediate dancing, moving through visible and invisible, grass and sky, and the danced secret and the real. The dance tumbles through the sound of a singular drone reed, hand-made by Jamie Green. The balloon-drone tells time, breath equaling minutes of body performing. The dance-drone is punctuated with bouts of percussion.

this performance is part of a series curated by Jmy James Kidd and Tara Jane O'Neil

Flour

presented at Hi, Solo #9 at Pieter Performance Space, Los Angeles

November 9, 2019, 8:30pm & 10pm 

 

3-minute practices of pelvis and that which dangles below and above it. movement comes through the sound of a singular drone, hand-made by Jamie Green. the balloon-drone is filled with 4 and 1/2 breaths of air, which is equal to three minutes of body performing.

Hi, Solo is a bi-annual performance, currently curated by Alexsa Durrans and Miles Brenninkmeijer. #9 is an evening of 9, three-minute solos.

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Dance Writings

writing on Simone Forti's Window / Simone Forti writing on Flourhttps://www.riting.org/post/190108944364/hi-solo-9

writing with Jennie Liu around Ligia Lewis: https://www.riting.org/post/188389177699/jennie-liu-and-alana-frey-reibstein-questions

writing on REDCAT's NOW Festival, 2018: https://www.riting.org/post/176533516634/alana-reibstein-on-the-now-festival-at-redcat

Eephus Pitch

in-Residency at PAM, May 2019

Performances: May 31 & June 1. 8pm at PAM, Los Angeles

In the finite and infinite cavities of performance, in the dualities engendered there, Alana plays baseball. With destiny & devotion, genius & myth, theater & drama, grass & sky, she travels infield to outfield and all across the bases. As she grows near and far to the positions of the game, its passing, and to time itself, she becomes the proximal site of birth...

 

In past time, Alana plays our green-est pastime. Doing Forever in the outfield, we must wait for the game to end.

 

this is a performance of dance, words, sounds, being, and objects in and of the space. this performance is being developed over a month-long residency at PAM. this performance is also of Jamie Green with organ and bells