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.