Studio Stories: NEW BREED series with Alexandra Bodnarchuk - Season 15, Episode 160

Alexandra Bodnarchuk is a Carpatho-Rusyn American choreographer
and cultural activist based in Minneapolis, MN. As the Artistic
Director and choreographer for Doma Dance Theater, Bodnarchuk
creates original works for the stage and screen that draw
together her ethnic heritage with contemporary movement
practices. Centering the body as a tangible site of culture,
Bodnarchuk explores questions of self-expression, community,
dispossession, and cross-cultural identity through works that
range from solo pieces to ensemble works.

Bodnarchuk is a 2021 Ann & Weston Hicks Choreography Fellow
at Jacob’s Pillow and a 2022 & 2020 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow
Finalist (Jerome Foundation). Her second evening-length work,
Rock, Paper, Scissors, was presented by The Southern Theater in
March 2023.

In 2024 she released her second dance film Mamko Moja L’uba,
which is named for a folk song popularized by Carpatho-Rusyn
singer Maria Mačoskova, and featured costumes inspired by
traditional clothing from the Zemplín region in Eastern Slovakia.
She also completed a commission for The Museum of Russian Art,
responding to Serbian sculptor Zoran Mojsilov’s surrealist
exhibition, The Dry Neck of the Pig. She is currently working on
two commissions to premiere in Spring/Summer 2025, including
being a Featured Artists in Arena Dance’s 2025
Candy Box Dance Festival.

Bodnarchuk is the daughter of first- and third-generation
immigrants. She was raised in Pittsburgh, PA, where she studied
European folk traditions, including classical ballet and Slavic
and Balkan folk dance. Southwestern PA, which hosts an active
community of Eastern European folk organizations, has the largest
concentration of Carpatho-Rusyns in the United States. As a
member of the North Hills Junior Tamburitzans, Bodnarchuk was
taught by the renowned Željko Jergan with a primary focus on
Croatian dances. She also performed with the now-shuttered
Slavjane Folk Ensemble, the sole Carpatho-Rusyn children’s dance
ensemble in the United States. Under the direction of Jack Poloka
she toured Slovakia, Poland, and Ukraine, exploring the diasporic
homeland and cultural landscape of the Carpatho-Rusyns.

Bodnarchuk graduated from Bodiography Contemporary Ballet’s
College Preparatory Program and then earned a BFA in Dance
Performance and Choreography and BA in French from Ohio
University (OU). During college, she spent a semester in Avignon,
France, training at the Conservatoire d’Avignon under Cyrille de
la Barre. She also studied Ghanaian dance and drumming under the
direction of Paschal Yao Younge and Zelma Badu-Younge and was
a
member of their group Azaguno African Dance Ensemble.

Embracing her role as a cultural activist, Bodnarchuk has
continued to deepen her study of and connection to Carpatho-Rusyn
cultural traditions by visiting her ethnic homeland and learning
the Rusyn language. By amplifying her ethnic heritage and probing
the connections among the Carpatho-Rusyn experience and diasporic
communities around the world, Bodnarchuk offers a potent
invitation to rediscover the unrecognized histories embedded in
each of us.